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THE HISTORY

OF THE

WESLEYAN METHODIST
MISSIONARY SOCIETY

THE HISTORY

OF THE

WESLEYAN METHODIST
MISSIONARY SOCIETY

G. G. FINDLAY, D.D.

AND

W. W. HOLDSWORTH, M.A., B.D.

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOL. V.

' Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace
given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ ;
and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which
from all ages hath been hid in God, who created all things ; to the
intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly
places might be made known through the Church the manifold wisdom
of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ
Jesus our Lord.' — ST. PAUL.

' I look upon all the world as my parish.' — JOHN WESLEY

LONDON

THE EPWORTH PRESS

J. ALFRED SHARP

£.550

M-

•BHIMMJEL'

First Edition
January, 1924.

5532 5
8 -6- /

Made and Printed in Great Britain by
Southampton Times Limited, Southampton.

PREFACE

THIS volume describes the work of the Wesleyan Methodist
Missionary Society in Ceylon, India, and China. With its
publication the Centenary History of that Society comes to
its close.

I would now acknowledge the help so freely and generously
given to me in the course of its compilation. So many have
assisted and encouraged me in different ways that a full
enumeration would crowd this page with names. Special
mention, however, must be made of the officers of the Society
and of the Rev. W. H. Thorp ; and of Messrs. E. E. Genner
and G. Vanner Rowe, who have read different volumes in
proof. From Miss Findlay I have received dossiers and other
compilations which have greatly lightened my labour. With
out these documents it would have been impossible to complete
the work within the time. The Chronological Table is the
work of Miss A. B. Cooke, my greatly esteemed colleague in
the Mysore District.

In view of the rapidly changing life of the East I have thought
it desirable to supplement what I have written by special
chapters on the Christian Church in China and India. These
have been contributed respectively by the Revs. H. B. Ratten-
bury and E. W. Thompson. The chapter on the Ceylonese
Ministry is the work of the Revs. E. Middleton Weaver and
W. J. Noble.

W. W. H.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME V

PART I
METHODIST MISSIONS IN CEYLON

CHAPTER I

PAOB

THE TAMIL DISTRICT — NORTH CEYLON . . . . -15

The Portuguese and the Dutch in Ceylon — The Coming of the
British — The Mission of Dr. Coke — The Galle Conference —
' Stations ' — Death of William Ault — Mrs. Schrader — Caste in
Ceylon — Joseph Roberts — Percival and Stott — Batticaloa —
Resignation of Percival — John Kilner and Edmund Rigg —
Manaar and Puttur — Later Developments.

CHAPTER II

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT — SOUTH CEYLON . . . -55

Harvard and Clough in Colombo — The Mission Press — Depres
sion — Disagreements with the Committee — Educational Work
— Close of the first Period — John Gogerly — Chairmanship of
Benjamin Clough — Dr. Kessen — Joseph Rippon at Galle —
Robert Spence Hardy — The Occupation of Kandy — A Tamil
Mission in Colombo — Wella watte— Chairmanship of John Scott
— The Galle District — Conflicts with Buddhists — Richmond
Hill — The Kandy District — Stephen Langdon — Educational
Work — The Province of Uva — The Missionary Spirit in Ceylon
— ^Statistics.

SUPPLEMENT : The Indigenous Ministry of Ceylon. . . . 108

8 CONTENTS

PART II

METHODIST MISSIONS IN INDIA

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND . . . . . .119

(a) Religious. — Hinduism — Environment — Compromise —
Nature- Worship — Idealism and Polytheism — Brahmanism
— A Monarchical Priesthood — Philosophic Basis of Caste.

(6) Social. — Caste is both Social and Religious — Attitude of
the Christian Church to Caste — A Test Case — A Declara
tion — Resultant Effects.

(c) Political. — The Charter of 1600 — The East India Company
and Hindu Religion — Lord William Bentinck — Neutrality
— A Case in the Mysore District.

CHAPTER II
THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE ... -151

The Preaching of the Gospel — Educational Missions — In
dustrial Schools — Literature and the Press — The Ministry of
Healing — The Training of the Ministry.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST ADVANCE . . .176

James Lynch — Madras — Negapatam — Bangalore — A too-
extended Line — A Policy proposed — Melnattam — Reinforce
ments — Jonathan Crowther — Joseph Roberts — Ebenezer
Jenkins — Beginnings in Mysore — Thomas Hodson — Gubbi —
William Arthur — Characteristics of the Kanarese People.

CHAPTER IV
PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD . . . . .213

(i.) The Madras District : ' The Sower.'

Madras in the 'fifties — W. O. Simpson — The Year of the
Great Mutiny — Manargudi — A Theological Institution —
Henry Little and Karur — Village Work — Mackenzie
Cobban and William Goudie — Tiruvallur and Ikkadu — A
great Manifesto — Developments in Ikkadu and Maduran-
takam (pp. 213-252).

CONTENTS

(ii.) The Negapatam and Trichinopoly District: 'The Draw-net.'

The Circuits of the District — Henry Little and Dharapu-
ram — W. H. Findlay at Negapatam — Medical Work in
the District — Trichinopoly — Manargudi and the Findlay
College — Conversions — Joseph West — The Promise of
Harvest (pp. 253-267).

(iii.) The Mysore District : ' The Leaven '

A Challenge — Garrett and the Mission Press — The Mysore
City School — Return of Thomas Hodson — Tours in the
Villages — John Hutcheon at Mysore Girls' Schools —
Training of Agents — The great Famine — A formative
Period — Muttu Lakshmi — Henry Haigh in Mysore —
Josiah Hudson and Romilly Ingram — Bubonic Plague and
its Results — A comprehensive Scheme — The Centenary
in Mysore (pp. 268-310).

(iv.) The Haidarabad District : ' The Good Samaritan.'

The Call of the Soldier and a Response — Special Features
of the Work in this District — William Burgess and ' The
breathless Year ' — Karim Nagar and Benjamin Pratt —
Effects of the ' Missionary Controversy ' — The Wreck of
the Roumania — C. W. Posnett and Medak — Years of
Famine — Chairmanship of the Rev. B. Pratt — The Mala
Movement and its Results — The Coming in of the Madigas
— Nizamabad (pp. 311-347).

(v.) The Bengal District : ' The Seed Growing Secretly.'

A false Start — The Second Attempt — The Chairmanship
of the Rev. John Baugh — A Season of real Growth — The
Rev. J. M. Brown — The Santal Mission — A Year of
Disasters — Educational Work in Bankura — Statistics
(pp. 348-362).

(vi.) The Lucknow and Benares District : ' The Marriage of the
King's Son.'

Beginnings — Extensions — Elliott of Fyzabad — Jabalpur
— Benares and the Doms — Dr. Horton's Impressions —
Akbarpur and the Chamars — Educational Work — The
Chair of the District — Statistics (pp. 363-374).

(vii.) The Bombay and Panjab District : ' The Pearl of Great
Price.'

A melancholy Beginning — The Rev. G. W. Clutterbuck
— The Maratha Mission — Samuel Rahator — Military
Work in the Panjab (pp. 375-380)

I0 CONTENTS

(viii.) The Burma District : ' The Mustard Seed.'

The Call to a new Enterprise — The Ideal and the Actual
Buddhism in Burma — Work in Pakokku — The Chair
manship of the Rev. W. R. Winston— The Home for
Lepers — Educational Work — Kyaukwe and the Shans —
Statistics (pp. 381-391).

CHAPTER V

MASS MOVEMENTS . . .... 392

The Baptisms at Ongole — Outstanding Features of the Move
ment — A Misnomer — Panchama Conditions— The Protest of
William Goudie — Conversion and Edification — The Move
ment in Tiruvallur — In Haidarabad — In Bengal — A sug
gested Policy — Community Movements in Dharapuram and
Mysore.

SUPPLEMENT : The Indian Church of the Future . . • 4I(>

PART III

METHODIST MISSIONS IN CHINA

CHAPTER I

PROLEGOMENA . .421

' The greatest Mission Field in the World ' — Knowledge and
Ethics — The Lack of Power — Confucianism, Buddhism, and
Taoism — Opium and the British East India Company — An
Evil Inheritance.

CHAPTER II

CANTON: A BARRED ENTRANCE • 43 1

A Reluctant Administration — George Piercy — The first Synod
—The Tai-ping Rebellion — War with Great Britain— The
Treaty of Tientsin— Fatshan— T. G. Selby— The Hakka People
— Hong Kong — Political Agitation.

CONTENTS ir

CHAPTER III

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY ....... 460

Josiah Cox — Hankow — William Scarborough and David Hill
— Christian Literature — David Hill's Furlough and its Con
sequences — Hunan — The Martyrdom of William Argent — The
Passing of David Hill — The War with Japan — The Boxer
Rising — Subsequent Developments.

CHAPTER IV

HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST ..... 496

The intolerant Province — The Occupation of Hunan —
Cbangsha — Riots — The Growth of the Church.

CHAPTER V

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA . . . 508

Slow Growth of this Work in Methodist Missions — First At
tempts in Hankow and in Canton — Dr. Wenyon — Dr. Roderick
Macdonald — Wuchow — Hankow and Dr. Hodge — A Succes
sion of Missionary Doctors — The Medical Service of Women —
The Wuchang Hospital and Dr. Margaret Bennett.

CHAPTER VI

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA .... 526

The Year 1905 in China — A Serious Deficit — The Indigenous
Ministry — Wesley College, Wuchang — Boarding Schools —
Work among Women — Education in the Canton District.

CHAPTER VII

THE LAYMEN'S MISSION ........ 540

Origin of the Mission — Joyful News Evangelists — A great
Service worthily rendered.

SUPPLEMENT : The Church of Christ in China in the Light of

To-day.. 547

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS .... 563

INDEX ........... 619

CORRIGENDA IN PRECEDING VOLUMES ..... 637

PART I

METHODIST MISSIONS IN CEYLON

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

Roberts — Percival and Stott — Batticaloa — Resignation of Percival

John Kilner and Edmund Rigg — Manaar and Puttur — Later Develop
ments.

THE geographical position of the island of Ceylon, and its out
standing features, are too well known to call for any detailed
description in our record of Methodist Missions within its
charming borders. Every traveller to the Far East or to the
Southern Archipelago knows the happy contrast which awaits
him when the torrid waters of the Red Sea, fringed with arid
rock, and the monotony of the Indian Ocean, give way to the
teeming life of Colombo and the amazing verdure of its hinter
land. He finds himself suddenly at the meeting-place of the
Far East and the Far West. At Port Said Europe and the
Nearer East form the dominant contrasts. It is in Colombo
that the Aryan and the Malay, the Australian, the American,
and the Englishman, make up the motley throng that crowds
the streets. The framework of the human picture is no less
striking. The red laterite roads run through gardens of gleam
ing emerald lighted by the flaming flowers of the tropics by
day, and by countless hosts of fireflies by night, and the
traveller knows that the alluring roads will lead him to the
heart of still more amazing beauty when they bring him at
last to Kandy. It is no wonder that the great poets of India
found the appropriate setting for their splendid romance of
the Ramayana, not on the vast plains or in the impassable
ravines of their own country, but in the faerie land of Lanka.
The Himalayas were to them the home of mystery, the far-off
dwelling-place of unapproachable gods ; but when the story
was of human love beset by adverse circumstance, yet triumph
ing at last through elfish cunning in alliance with a passion

16 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

that sought and suffered until at last it delivered the beloved,
they found the true scenery of the moving drama in Ceylon.

Its geographical position, at the centre where the lines cross
from east to west and from north to south, accounts for all
that goes to make up its earlier history. Invaders, both Aryan,
Dravidian, and Arab, made their presence felt long before
any historical record of their movements existed. The only
records we can study to-day are to be found, for the most part,
in the resultant ethnological condition. Glimpses of move
ments, military, economic, and religious, are given, it is true,
in the legendary lore of the country, but these are too much
formed by the fancy of the poet or the devout fables of the
pious to supply any firm foundation for the historian. The
bridge by which Hanuman, the monkey-god, was able to
invade the island and secure for Rama the rescue of Sita shows
the line followed by Aryan invaders from India more than
two thousand years ago. Adam's Peak is an indication of a
Muhammadan invasion, and the footprints of Buddha, still
held in reverence by thousands of his disciples, indicate the
impressions left by the first missionaries of the faith
taught by Buddha. In the same way the ruins of
old Sinhalese cities reveal something of the conflict between
the Tamils and the Sinhalese, in the course of which the latter
were driven to the south of the island, and the former estab
lished themselves in the north, while the area over which the
tides of battle ebbed and flowed became a ' no-man's-land/
speedily reoccupied by the forest, whose monstrous growths
swept over the sites of once populous cities and cultivated
plains. As is invariably the case when migrating nations
swarm into countries other than their own, the aboriginal
inhabitants were driven farther and farther into the depths
of the forest or the unexplored fastnesses of mountains, where
they started on the decline which now threatens to become
extinction. In Ceylon these aborigines are represented by the
Veddahs, of whom only a few hundred survive to-day. Of
the invaders the Aryans are to be found in the Sinhalese, and
the Dravidians in the Tamil-speaking people of the northern
half of the island.

The Muhammadans, who are found in both the north and
the south, are commonly called ' Moors,' and the name is a
relic of bygone trade, which Henry of Portugal sought to

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 17

intercept when he sent Vasco de Gama round the Cape of Good
Hope to break a line of communication which brought wealth
to the Moslems. To the Portuguese all Moslems were ' Moors/
and the name remains in Ceylon to mark the first appearance
of Europeans in the island. Later on the Dutch brought
Malays from their Far Eastern possessions to Ceylon, as they
also did to South Africa, and these remain, with their co
religionists from the West, to make up a considerable Muham-
madan element, numbering more than two hundred and forty
thousand, in Ceylon.

There are many indications that with the Arab traders came
a certain number of Persians, and this may account for the
tradition that there were Christians in Ceylon before the coming
of the Portuguese. If there be any truth in the tradition,1
these would be members of the Syrian Church, which still
exists on the Malabar coast of India. In all probability they
were traders, who disappeared with the coming of the Portu
guese in 1505. At any rate, there were then no Christians in
Ceylon. Marco Polo, who visited Ceylon in 1290, declared
that ' The inhabitants are idolaters ' ; and, if any degree of
exactness may be attached to the general statement, the two
dates give us a period of two centuries, within which the Syrian
Christians came and went. On the arrival of the Portuguese,
immediately after constructing the fort of Colombo they de
clared the country immediately surrounding it to be a
Bishopric, and under the directions of the Prelate. Christianity
was proclaimed throughout the southern part of the island.
In J544 a notable Missionary appeared in the person of St.
Francis Xavier, who came to the northern coasts from India.
It is said that he baptized six or seven hundred members of the
caste of fishermen. In spite of opposition and persecution
the faith which he taught spread, until the Raja of Jaffna
declared his readiness to enter the Christian Church, and to
make alliance with the King of Portugal. That alliance was
fatal to his independence. The Raja was soon expelled from
his dominions, and the Poituguese were thus masters of the
whole seacoast of Ceylon. The only portion of the island
which retained any amount of independence was the kingdom
of Kandy, of which we shall have more to say in later pages.

1 Hough's History of Christianity in India, Vol. I., pp. 30 ff.

18 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

The ecclesiastical leaders of the Portuguese soon established
their Church. Its domains were conterminous with those of
the civil power, and the conversion of the inhabitants to the
Romish Church speedily followed. The methods adopted in
bringing this about were not such as could be followed to-day.
The axiom, so often discredited yet so persistently followed,
that the end justifies the means, was accepted as the governing
law of their evangelism. Romish ceremonies and ritual were
made to conform to heathen practice, and it was claimed that
the new cult was only a more ancient, and therefore a more
authoritative, form of both Brahmanism and Buddhism. In
the north, where they were cut off from observation, and were
not likely to be opposed by ruling chiefs, proselytizing was
vigorously carried on. Conversions — so called — were on the
largest scale, and within a few years almost the entire popula
tion of the Jaffna Peninsula had submitted to the Church.
It is true that Xavier expressed his misgiving as to the value
of accessions which were in form rather than in spirit, and
which were brought about by motives so far removed from
the moral or spiritual sphere, but the methods which had
proved to be so fruitful continued to be observed, until it
seemed as if the Jesuits had been converted to Hinduism
rather than the Hindus to Christianity. The scandal became
so great that at last Pope Benedict XIV was constrained to
issue a strongly worded Bull, by the terms of which the customs
followed by the Jesuits were strictly prohibited. In the south
their proceedings were more cautious. The Kings of Kandy
and Cotta were still powers to be reckoned with, and it was
feared that any pronounced proselytism might lead to hostility.
It was not until these chiefs were brought under the control
of the Portuguese that any distinct effort was made to bring
the Sinhalese into the fold of Rome. By that time, however,
the position of the Portuguese in Ceylon was being challenged
by the Dutch, and with the subsequent supremacy of the
latter the power of the Roman Church began to diminish
Many of the Sinhalese had professed acceptance of Romish
teaching, but their allegiance had been secured in view of
social and political advancement. When that prospect was
closed multitudes of converts quickly reverted to their former
faith, though many families of Ceylonese to-day bear the
names conferred upon them by Portuguese sponsors at the

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 19

time when their ancestors were baptized. In the north there
were similar cases of reversion to the easily abandoned
Hinduism, and within a very short time thousands of converts
had returned to the faith and practice of their fore
fathers.

The Portuguese administration of Ceylon had been marked
by unscrupulous greed and revolting cruelty. It was a military
despotism which did not attempt to conciliate the native
races, to say nothing of furthering their interests. Meantime
the Dutch had been establishing themselves in the Asiatic
Archipelago, and in 1636 their help was sought by the King of
Kandy to expel the Portuguese from Ceylon. The King was
to bear all the expenses of the war, and in return the Dutch
were to hand over to him all territories taken from their common
enemy. Galle was on these terms occupied by the Dutch in
1640, and six years after Colombo was in their possession.
Jaffna fell into their hands in 1658. But when they had thus
dispossessed the Portuguese they refused to carry out the
treaty they had made with Kandy, and they continued to
occupy these places and to consolidate their position in the
island. The course of time was to avenge this gross act of
perfidy, but at first they accepted gleefully the principle of
beati possidentes. Their conflict with the Romanists in Europe
had made them bitterly hostile to that Church, and they at
once took steps to bring about, as they hoped, the extinction
of the Papal power in Ceylon. The Reformed Church of
Holland was declared to be the ' Established Church of Ceylon.'
Romish priests were deprived of their benefices, and, wherever
possible, were driven out of the island, while chapels and
churches were desecrated and destroyed. Indeed, the Dutch
seemed more opposed to Romanists than they were to Buddhists
or Hindus ; probably they thought that the former were the
more formidable power. For many years, in proclamation
after proclamation, they sought to crush out of existence the
ecclesiastical system which had tyrannized over their fore
fathers in the Netherlands. But such acts of repression
often defeat their own purpose. The persecuted Church fell
back upon principles which had been obscured in the days of
prosperity ; it was welded by the flames of persecution into
a strength greater than it had possessed before, and the King
of Kandy, outraged by the treachery of the Dutch, provided

20 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

an asylum for the dispossessed Romanists. The priests
continued their ministration, though often surreptitiously,
and one of these in particular, a Goanese preacher of the name
of Joseph Vaz, was venerated far and wide through the island
for his self-sacrificing zeal.

The Dutch saw from the first the importance of education in
religion. Schools and seminaries for teachers were set up
wherever it seemed desirable to do so, and when the government
of the island passed from the hands of the Dutch into those of
the English the number of children in the schools was little
short of eighty-five thousand. The good result of such efforts
was, however, nullified by two defects inherent in every depart
ment of Dutch administration. One was the coercion exercised
by fining those who refused to send their children to school,
and the other was the motive supplied by making preferment
in public office depend upon attendance at school. Education
was to be sought, not for its own sake, but in part because of
pressure brought to bear upon parents, and in part because
social and economic advancement depended upon at least a
show of compliance. As soon as the constraint was relaxed,
or personal advantage ceased to depend upon the formal
compliance, educational returns began to show a marked
diminution in the number of those attending school.

The same fatal error appeared in the sphere of religion.
Unreality and self-interest formed a foundation which was
bound to break up. It was publicly announced that even
the lowest official position was not to be won except by those
who had accepted baptism, and made a public confession of
the faith taught by the Dutch Ministers. The consequence
was the appearance of a class known as ' Government
Christians,' and while the ecclesiastical returns were numerically
impressive, the greater part of the adherents, officially registered
as ' Christians/ remained Hindus or Buddhists at heart. In
x663 — that is, five years after the Dutch occupation of the
island — it was reported that there were sixty-five thousand
conyerts in the kingdom of Jaffna alone. In 1801 the number
in the whole island was given as three hundred and forty
thousand, in addition to those who were of the Roman per
suasion. But within a few years Protestantism in the north
was practically extinct, and in the south it was insignificant,
those who had professed it having returned to the Roman faith

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 21

or to Hinduism. So complete is the relapse of those who,
Christians by name, know nothing of the power of Christ in
their lives. There were other consequences of this appalling
apostasy which remained. The moral tone of the people had
become vitiated by an unreal and selfish profession, and the
ease with which they had passed from the profession of
Buddhism to that of Christianity, and then back again to
Buddhism, had weakened all the sanctions of religion as such,
and had created a moral and spiritual indifference far more
difficult for the Missionary to combat than a blind and bigoted
adherence to their original belief would have been, while sincere
seekers after truth hesitated to identify themselves with a
community so properly discredited by all right-thinking men.
In after days the descendants of the more worthy adherents
of the Dutch Church, known as ' Burghers,' identified them
selves with missionary Churches, and rendered honourable
and distinguished service. The names of many of these will
appear in the pages which follow.

In 1795 England found herself deserted by the nations which
had formed with her the first international coalition against
France. Holland had become practically a French province,
not without a large measure of gratification to the friends of
France in the Netherlands. But this identification of Holland
with France in the great conflict of those days left the Dutch
colonies at the mercy of the British fleet, and both Ceylon, the
Cape of Good Hope, and other of their possessions in the Far
East, came into the hands of the British. For some time the
tenure of the island was uncertain, but by the Treaty of Amiens
in 1802 Ceylon was definitely assigned to the British. With
this decision a new era in the religious history of the island
commenced. The Portuguese had compromised the truth
they held ; the Dutch had sought to inculcate doctrine by
frowns and favours ; the British offered a fair field in which
the different systems might present their several claims with
out ecclesiastical cajoleries or official rewards. The first
Governor of Ceylon was the Hon. Frederick North, who after
wards, as the Earl of Guildford, sought to revivify the classical
schools of Greece.1 For some time the Church of Holland
was recognized as the Established Church of Ceylon, just as
had been done in South Africa ; but the wholesale relapse of

1 See Vol. IV., p. 423.

22 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

both Tamils and Sinhalese soon made that attitude impossible,
and in 1816 the adherents of the Anglican Church were brought
under the spiritual control and direction of the Metropolitan
Bishop of Calcutta. Both Mr. North and Sir Thomas Maitland,
who succeeded him, sought to strengthen and develop the
educational system of the Dutch, but with little success. So
notorious was the apostasy of these so-called Christians that
in 1808 a dispatch was received by Sir Thomas Maitland from
the Secretary of State to inform him of the fact that the
measures of Government had been freely censured for discourag
ing the progress of Christianity, and inducing the natives of
Ceylon to relapse into paganism. So uninformed may be the
zeal of those who at a distance find it difficult to assign true
causes to the effects which they deplore. The decline of the
number of adherents to the Christian Church continued, until
in 1813 the Protestant ecclesiastical establishment of the island
consisted of three Chaplains of the Anglican Church, two
German Presbyterians, and half a dozen ' Proponents,' or
Deacons, of the Church of Holland. But we have now come
in this brief historical survey to a period of missionary effort
in which the methods employed were certainly more
enlightened, and therefore more likely to be permanent. In
1804 the London Missionary Society sent to the island four
German Missionaries. One of these, the Rev. J. D. Palm,
afterwards became the Pastor of the Dutch Church in Colombo,
and wrote an account of the Dutch Church in Ceylon which
throws much light upon the early religious condition of the
island. The mission labours of these, however, soon came to
an end. The Baptists appeared in 1812, and two years after
the Methodists arrived, under circumstances which it is now
our business to relate.

We have already described the events which immediately
preceded Dr. Coke's great missionary adventure, and we have
indicated something of the fervour, the absorbing passion,
with which for many years he had contemplated a Mission to
the East.1 His emotion on the eve of embarkation found
expression in words which reveal an enthusiasm childlike in
simplicity, yet glowing with the rapturous joy of the saint.

'See Vol. II., pp. 17-18.

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 23

One of his companions on the fateful voyage, the Rev. Benjamin
Clough, describing the assembling of the party at Portsmouth,
writes in the Methodist Magazine of December 10, 1813 :

I have seldom seen the Doctor more lively and happy than he has
been this day. . . . His happy soul would frequently break forth in
loud praises to God, who had thus far opened his way to the East.
When he had collected his little party at Portsmouth, and they were
all assembled round him, he lifted up his hands and heart to God,, and
broke forth in the following language : ' Here we are, all before God
embarked in the most glorious and most important work in the world.
Glory be ascribed to His blessed name that He has given you to be my
companions and assistants in carrying the gospel to the poor Asiatics,
and that He has not suffered parents, brothers, sisters, or the dearest
friends to stop any of you from accompanying me to India.' At this
time he seemed as though he had not a dormant faculty about him ;
every power of his soul was now employed in forwarding the work in
which he had engaged.

The Church may well stand in reverence, even after a hundred
years, before a flame so holy, a devotion so complete. Here
was ' enthusiasm ' in the true sense of that word. It was not
that of youth, which might have been due to an exuberant
temperament unbalanced by knowledge. It was that of an
old man who for long years had studied human life. It was
that of an Oxford scholar, of an eminent jurist, of a great
traveller. But it was that of one who had seen Christ, and
who had, like his great forerunner, ' counted all things but
dross that he might know the power of His resurrection and
the fellowship of His sufferings.' It was not given to him to
preach the gospel to those whom he regarded from afar with
an infinite and genuine love, but who shall say that his life
lacked fulfilment ? In the service of God it is not the doing
that counts for most ; it is the completeness of the personal
devotion. He reveals to our more calculating minds that
gleam of the immortal spirit which touches humanity to
greatness. No balance-sheet of loss and gain is of any value
in judging the worth of such men as Dr. Coke. They reveal a
spiritual quality which is not measured by such dull calculations,
and their emergence from the ranks of those who never reach
the heights of their moral and spiritual consciousness gives us
hope for the human race.

24 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

Servants of God ! — or sons
Shall I not call you ? Because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father's innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees
One of His little ones lost —
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted, and fallen, and died.1

On May 3, 1814, Dr. Coke was found dead in his cabin, and was
buried at sea in about 8 degrees south latitude, and 39 degrees
east longitude.

The names of Dr. Coke's companions are given in the Minutes
of Conference, 1813, and their appointment is declared in the
following words ; ' The Conference authorizes and appoints
Dr. Coke to undertake a mission to Ceylon and Java, and
allows him to take with him for that purpose six* Preachers,
exclusively of one for the Cape of Good Hope.' This last-
named appointment was filled by the Rev. John McKenny, a
Preacher from Dublin, the story of whose unsuccessful attempt
at the Cape of Good Hope appears in Vol. IV. of this History/
Foiled in Africa, he came to Ceylon, and we shall find that there
he served to excellent purpose. Ireland was a fruitful
recruiting-ground for Dr. Coke when he was in need of Mis
sionaries, and two others of his companions, James Lynch and
George Erskine, were also from that country. The latter
was at first appointed to Matara, in South Ceylon, and after
seven years' service removed to New South Wales, where he
died in 1834. Of James Lynch we shall have much to record,
both in connexion with North Ceylon and India. William
Ault, William Martin Harvard, Benjamin Clough, and Thomas
Hall Squance were all Ministers who had served in English
Circuits for a few years, and they were all men who left a
distinct impression upon the work entrusted to them. Speak
ing of these great pioneer Missionaries in the Anniversary
Services of 1829, William Wilberforce said : ' I was told by
the Governor [of Ceylon] himself that each of them would have
been an honour to the choice of not only the most pious and

1 Matthew Arnold, ' Rugby Chapel.'

*To prove that this mission had been in the thought of John Wesley, it is inter
esting to note that in 1784 it was stated that Mr. Wesley was of opinion that not less
than half a dozen should at first be sent upon such a mission (Meth. Mag., 1852, p.
587).

8 See Vol. IV., p. 241.

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 25

fervent man, but of the wisest and most prudent man ever
employed in that work.' But the position of these men when
they found that their great leader had been taken from them
was one of extraordinary helplessness. Dr. Coke had kept
in his own hands all arrangements for the financing of the
Mission after arrival in Ceylon. He had handed over to the
captain for safe keeping the sum of four hundred pounds, but
Captain Birch quite rightly considered this to be a trust which
could be surrendered only to the executors of Dr. Coke in
England. The six Missionaries were thus left without enough
to provide a single meal when they should arrive at Bombay.
They knew no one in that city, nor had they any letter of
introduction to those who might have helped them, and at
least a year would elapse before the Secretaries in England
would be able to get into touch with them. In the course of
the voyage Mrs. Ault had died, and both Squance and Harvard
had been seriously ill. They arrived at Bombay on May 21,
1814, a band of men sent out to win for Christ the apparently
impregnable citadel of Hinduism, and they landed like orphan
children in an unknown land, without enough to furnish the
gratuities which travellers bestow upon those who minister
to their needs. They came to their great Mission stripped of
everything that, from a material point of view, might have
given them some little hope of success.

They had, however, a very true friend in Captain Birch,
and he introduced them to Mr. W. T. Monet, a British merchant
in Bombay, and an assurance that financial matters would be
arranged removed one of their anxieties. An interview with
the Governor of Bombay still further reassured them. Sir
Evan Nepean received them with sympathy, and spoke
affectionately of John Wesley, whom he had known in his
boyhood.

He also expressed the high sense which the British Government
had ever entertained of Mr. Wesley's principles and proceedings, and
added that the great Lord North did not hesitate to attribute a con
siderable portion of the loyalty and contentment which prevailed in
our native land to the sound principles and indefatigable exertions of
Mr. Wesley.1

The Governor's country house at Parel was placed at the
disposal of the missionary party, and presently the troubled

1 Harvard's Narrative &c.

26 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

and perplexed men were comfortably housed. A passage to
Ceylon was taken, and all except the Harvards left for that
island. It was considered inadvisable for Mrs. Harvard to
run the risk of a voyage, as it was then the monsoon season.
They followed their colleagues with the child that was born
to them while they waited in Bombay, and after a perilous
voyage landed at Point de Galle, where they were restored
to the companionship of Messrs. Clough and Squance.

While the Harvards waited in Bombay their colleagues
addressed themselves to making such arrangements as were
possible for beginning work. Sir Evan Nepean had interested
the Governor of Ceylon, General Brownrigg, in them, and they
found every provision made for their reception. They were
lodged in the Government House in the Fort of Galle, and the
Governor's Chaplain, the Rev. George Bisset, was sent from
Colombo to bid them welcome, and to assure them that every
effort would be made by the Government to promote their
work. It was suggested that until they were able to receive
regular financial support from England they should each take
up school work at certain centres, in return for which service
they would receive a grant from the Government. The stations
recommended were Jaffna, Manaar, Batticaloa, Galle, and
Matara. Colombo was not recommended, because that city
was already well provided with teachers in the Government
schools. Ten days were spent by the Missionaries in prayer
and consultation, and then, on July n, 1814, what Mr. Harvard
calls ' the little Conference ' was opened at Galle. The most
anxious question which awaited them was the familiar one,
' How are the Ministers and Preachers stationed ? ' It was
recognized at once that the linguistic division of the island
meant that those who might be stationed in the north, where
Tamil was spoken, would be separated by more than distance
from those who might be stationed in the south, where Sinhalese
was the language in use. Any exchange of Circuits would
thus be precluded, and the brethren, welded together as they
had been by their sorrows and fears, contemplated the in
evitable division with great misgiving. It was at length
decided that Lynch and Squance should go to Jaffna, and
Ault to Batticaloa, while Erskine and Clough should remain
in the south, the former at Matara and the latter at Galle. It
was agreed that the health of Squance forbade his going to a

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 27

station where he would be alone. Colombo was assigned to
Harvard, when he should join them. It was in this way that
the division, familiar in Methodist records, of ' The North
Ceylon District ' and ' The South Ceylon District ' was made.
On the Thursday following the brethren took their sacrament
together, joined in that holy communion by the Governor of
Galle, Lord Molesworth, and then they separated and went
to their several stations with feelings which may be better
imagined than described.

The Committee in England was shocked and distressed on
hearing of the death of Dr. Coke. There seems to have been
some delay in forwarding the letters written by the Mission
aries during their voyage and while they were in Bombay,
and the first intimation that the great Missionary Leader had
died at sea reached the Mission House through private letters
written by individual Missionaries to their friends. The first
letter sent to them by the Secretaries expresses their ' surprise '
that they had received no official intimation, and that the
tidings conveyed were not more ' explicit.' Instructions were
given that Mr. Lynch should act as ' Superintendent ' of the
Ceylon Mission, ' until a person be appointed from England
to take the general superintendence of the Eastern Mission.'
The letter is curt and lacking in sympathy, while it reveals an
unreasonable impatience because the writer had received no
official communication from the Missionaries. The second
letter written, in February, 1815 — the date is to be noted —
by which time the delayed communications had arrived, was
written in better spirit, and must have brought a measure of
comfort to the perplexed and sorrowing men. The Committee
was relieved to hear of the sympathy and help afforded by
the officers of Government, and entirely approved of the
arrangements made by the Missionaries. The latter are ex
horted to take care of their health, and the promise is given
that ' everything that may be deemed necessary will be
supplied,' as the Committee was ' fully convinced that the
work of the Lord should never be cramped by a parsimonious
spirit.' Such generous offers, however, did not continue long.
Inexperience betrayed the young men into an expenditure
which alarmed the Committee, and many were the reprimands
which they afterwards received on this score.

Lynch and Squance passed through Colombo on their way

28 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

to Jaffna, and were asked by the Governor to take under their
charge a young Moorman, who had been baptized in Colombo
and whose life was now threatened by his former co-religionists.
At the Synod of 1816 this convert, Daniel Theophilus, was
brought forward by the Chairman as a candidate for ordination,
and he was received as an ' Assistant Missionary/ Up to this
point he seems to have given every satisfaction, and there
was good hope that a devoted and efficient worker had been
found. But by the following year he had disappeared, and
the only reference to him is the somewhat mysterious record
in the Minutes : ' We believe that he deceived us himself and
was ungenerously taken from us.' A much more reliable
helper was found in Christian David, a convert of the German
Missionary Schwartz, and from him they received a hearty
welcome to Jaffna. They were also cordially received by the
sub-collector of the province, who shortly after became a
member of Society, and a friendly and generous helper to our
Missionaries. Services were begun in the Fort Church, and
there was every indication that a strong Methodist Society
would soon be formed, but in the following year both Mission
aries had returned to Galle on account of ill-health. It was
not long before Lynch came back to Jaffna, but Squance was
obliged to remain in the south for several months.

Meantime Ault had arrived at Batticaloa, much shaken
because of a particularly stormy journey. When he arrived
he found sickness prevalent in Batticaloa, and the fact was
depressing. He gave himself up to pastoral work, and soon
gathered a congregation, to whom he ministered on the Sunday.
Here, too, it seemed as though ' an abundant entrance ' had
been given to the Missionary, but his health had been under
mined by exposure, and eight months after his arrival he died —
the first of many Missionaries who have crowned their service
in the East by the sacrifice of life.

In a long letter to his mother, written three months after his
arrival at Batticaloa, Ault describes his position. In the light
of his death, which followed so soon after, that letter is full
of pathos. The loneliness of his station, the privations in food
and lodging so cheerfully accepted, the eagerness with which
he entered upon such work as was possible, the plans which
he was beginning to form and which were hindered by the
torrential rains of the monsoon — all these things are set forth

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 29

with a simplicity which makes the letter a very human docu
ment. When the description of his surroundings is complete
he passes on to say :

But, my dear mother, the best news is yet to come. Here is a very
pleasing prospect of establishing a Mission. There are some persons
who are seriously disposed. I have begun a little Class-meeting, and
have nineteen members. I feel strong faith in God that He will pour
out His Spirit mightily upon us.

A postscript, written on October 18, speaks of his having been
very ill, and in the spring of the next year, after only eight
months' residence in Batticaloa, he passed to the fuller service
to which he was called, but before he passed he had gathered
together a congregation of a hundred and fifty, and by its
members he was greatly beloved. His memory is a hallowing
influence resting upon the Church in Batticaloa for all time,
and it was fitting that the Mission Hall which was
built by Mr. West in 1897 should be consecrated to his
memory.

No record of the coming of Methodist Missionaries to Jaffna
would be complete without some reference to one who proved
to be a great helper in their efforts to build up a Christian
Church in that town. Mrs. Schrader was a member of the
Dutch Presbyterian Church, and for some years before the
arrival of the Missionaries she was the spiritual teacher of
those who sought the comfort and guidance of religion. She
could speak Dutch, Portuguese, and Tamil with equal
proficiency, and later on she added English to the languages
at her command. She was accustomed to gather together in
her house all who were willing to come, and to these she would
read sermons in Dutch, and lead them in worship. She soon
attached herself to the Missionaries, regarding their coming
as an answer to her prayer. At the request of the Rev. Joseph
Roberts she translated the Wesleyan Hymn-book into
Portuguese and composed a metrical history of the Bible.
For many years she served as a teacher in a girls' school under
the direction of the Mission. She lived to the age of eighty-
three, and died in 1850, a true ' Mother in Israel,' beloved by
all and honoured for the consecration of her great gifts to the
service of Christ.

3o THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

Of the Missionaries sent out to Ceylon in 1816 those appointed
to the Northern District were the Revs. R. Carver, S. Broad-
bent, and E. Jackson. Of these the first-named joined Lynch
and Squance at Jaffna, and the other two began work at
Trincomalee. McKenny was stationed for a short time at
Batticaloa, but was shortly after transferred to the Sinhalese
District. Batticaloa was supervised by the brethren at
Trincomalee until 1820, when the Rev. T. Osborne was sent
to shepherd the little flock collected by Ault during the short
period of his ministry. In the same year the Revs. J. Roberts,
Joseph Bott, and Abraham Stead were added to the staff. By
this time the separation of the Northern District from the
Southern had been effected, and Lynch was appointed to be
Chairman of the former. Of his relations with the home
Committee we shall write in our description of the
troubles which arose when the two Districts were under one
administration, and his work in Madras will come before us
in a later chapter. We need not therefore repeat the story of
strained relations between the men on the field and the board
of administrators in London. In 1822 the Synod of the
Northern District adopted the resolutions of the Southern
Synod respecting the strictures passed upon them by the
Committee. When the Minutes of the Synods arrived in
England the Committee saw that their censure had been too
severe, that the Missionaries were unduly discouraged, and
were asking to be recalled. Resolutions were therefore passed
affirming that the Committee had had no wish to discourage
the Missionaries, and that the latter possessed their complete
confidence. It must be acknowledged that if this were so
the Committee had chosen a strange method of showing
it, and it is not to be wondered at that the men on the
field were aggrieved. In a letter written in 1822 Carver
thanks Richard Watson for a letter of encouragement
and sympathy ; ' so interesting a disappointment.' He has
learnt to look for nothing but criticism and censure from the
Mission House, and ' nothing was less welcome to us than a
letter from Europe.' There is much more in this letter to the
same effect. The Methodist Mission in Ceylon was begun under
serious disadvantage, for it is the pioneer Missionary who
most of all needs the assurance that he has the sympathy and
confidence of the Church at his back in days when he stands

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 31

almost alone in a strange land. Where these are not forth
coming discouragement, hesitation, and inefficiency are
inevitable. The success that afterwards came to this District
is all the more wonderful when we remember the bad start
that was made. The sickly infant became a giant. In other
matters we may note the building of an English school
in 1817 on the site afterwards occupied by the Central
College in Jaffna, and the beginning of services at Point
Pedro.

In one particular the Northern District was less fortunate
than the Southern. More than one of the first Missionaries
in the former proved to be a grievous disappointment to their
brethren, and a serious hindrance to their cause. Both Stead
and Broadbent left Ceylon ' under a cloud ' after a brief period
of service. The latter was able to begin a new chapter in the
story of his service in South Africa, where he was privileged
to begin the Mission to the Barolongs,1 but the former, after
some years, in which his health was such that he could do
nothing, returned to England in 1827. Thomas Osborne
proved to be a most zealous and efficient Missionary, but he
suffered from an over-impulsive nature, and would sometimes
say and write things that grieved his brethren. He returned
to England in 1824, but for some years before this he had
threatened resignation. Elijah Jackson returned before he
had been many months in the island, and Joseph Bott, return
ing in 1825, ceased to be connected with the Methodist Church.
It must be confessed that this is a long list of failures, and,
coming from one District within a few years of beginning work,
it accounts to a large extent for the fact that the Church in
North Ceylon was long in gathering the momentum which
happily characterized it in later years. In 1825 the members
in the three stations of Jaffna, Trincomalee, and Batticaloa
were respectively twenty-two, nine, and eleven.

There was, however, another reason for this slow develop
ment, and it is to be found in the character of the field of work.
The Tamil immigrant in North Ceylon by the mere fact of
migration cut himself loose from the more binding restrictions
of caste. In India the Brahman knows quite well that his
position in the social scale is guaranteed just so long as caste
retains its terrible sanctions, and vested interests alone would

1 See Vol. IV., pp. 260 ff.

32 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

make him careful to see that its laws are observed. His
temples and ceremonial, too, are impressive, and exert an
influence far from negligible, even among those who stand
outside the four great divisions of the social order; and although
the emigrants from India may not even belong to the caste
population, they nevertheless take with them a certain measure
of observance of its distinctions.

Caste is a system of social grading into which religion has
been so interwoven that to the vast majority of people in
India the practice of religion consists of the observance of the
rules of caste. The Tamil emigrant may not recognize the
full force of the religious sanction, but he often clings
tenaciously to the social distinctions also implied in caste.
Buddhism, as originally taught— and that distinction should
always be made — denied the validity of caste regulations, and
in consequence the Sinhalese did not find the same difficulties
in his way if he wished to enter the Christian Church. The
Tamil, on the other hand, was still partly under its sway, and
Missionaries in the north of the island had in consequence a
harder task, though not so hard as they would have had in
Madura or Madras. This difference between North and South
Ceylon, as well as between the island and the continent, must
always be borne in mind when estimating the progress made
by the Christian Church in the respective fields. For the
rest the degrading influence of popular Hinduism was as
marked in Ceylon as we shall find it to be in India.

There was at least one feature of the work in this earliest
period which was wholly advantageous, and it is to be seen
in the wise selection of sites for Mission premises. This was
made in such a way as to leave little for succeeding generations
of Missionaries to desire in the matter of centrality, but those
pioneers did not guess at the multiplication of agencies which
the years would bring, and later purchases of property were
made under conditions happily unknown to those who acquired
the first sites in Jaffna, Trincomalee, and Batticaloa.

In 1824 the administrative bond between Ceylon and con
tinental India was severed, and this event marks the beginning
of the second and happier period in the history of the Church in
North Ceylon. It was roughly coincident with the Chairman
ship of the Rev. Joseph Roberts, who was one of those sent out
to this field in 1820. Other Missionaries of the period were

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 33

the Revs. J. F. England (1825, transferred to Madras the
following year) ; J. C. George (1826-1838), Peter Percival
(1826-1851), and Ralph Stott (1829-1847). These were men
of greater force and character than those who immediately
preceded them, and the last two named left a very distinct
mark upon the work in this District. But the outlook at the
beginning of the period was enough to daunt most men.
Roberts and Stead were the only European Missionaries left,
and the latter was suffering from some form of mental derange
ment. One or two Burghers had been admitted into the ranks
of the ministry, but the prejudice of some members of the
Church forbade their being sent to certain stations. It says
much for Roberts that he was able to hold on until better times
came. Happily they were close at hand. Meantime the
Chairman was thinking hard of the Church that was to be.
We find him raising the important question of the status of
Ceylonese Ministers, and taking up generally the position which
was to be justified in later years. The guidance and direction
of European Missionaries on their first arrival was another
matter which caused him anxiety. Percival and George had
arrived in 1826, and the Chairman was distracted in mind
between the spiritual needs of the Circuits and the perils of
sending new and untried men to them.

Tbe risks to be run had been brought only too vividly under
his own observation for him to acquiesce in the appointment
of a young Missionary to a station where he would be alone
in an atmosphere of immoral heathenism. The question of
training an indigenous ministry was also much on his mind.
He outlines a scheme for this, and implores the Committee
to send some one to work it. He prepares a draft of rules for
the different Societies now in process of formation, and consults
the Secretaries as to the order to be observed in the ordination
of Ministers. He keeps a watchful eye for every opportunity
for expansion, and is anxious to occupy Manaar, where he
thinks a Mission may be begun. Finally he enters upon the
vexed question of the best method of financing the District.
All these were questions of first importance in founding a
Christian Church in a country still lacking the traditions
which attract or repel. In Ceylon they were questions of
peculiar difficulty, and Roberts had to face them alone, with
no colleague or Synod whose counsels might have helped him.

34 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

The arrival of Percival1 and George brought him the relief of
companionship, but, on the other hand, it brought the clash
and conflict of minds which did not agree as to the course,
though all were agreed as to the goal. During the next few
years Roberts and George were frequently at variance. In
1831 the latter refused to sign the Minutes of the Synod, and
in the following year he refused to attend its sessions. In so
small a Synod as that of North Ceylon at this time difference
of opinion may easily harden into personal opposition, and
Roberts urged more than once that the two Synods in the
island should be brought again under one administration.
One question which divided the Synod and caused much
searching of heart was whether a European Missionary
was more necessary at Jaffna or at Point Pedro. In the
former of the two work was being done at this time in Portu
guese, and both Percival and George considered that the
prospects at Point Pedro were better. The difficulty was
removed by the arrival of Ralph Stott in 1829, and by his being
put in charge of the work at Point Pedro. Three years after
this Roberts returned to England, and Percival was appointed
Chairman in his place, greatly to the vexation of George, who
had expected that the appointment would fall to him. Clough
was accordingly asked by the Committee to attend the Synod
of the Jaffna District and report on the situation. The issue
of the contention was that Clough 's name appears as Chairman
for the Northern District during the years 1833-1836. At the
end of the three years George returned to England, and Percival
entered upon an administration which was long continued,
and fraught with great issues for North Ceylon.

Two dominant personalities now confronted one another in
Percival and Stott, and the lists were prepared for the long-
continued conflict between the policy which gave pre-eminence
to education as a means of reaching the people, and the policy
of evangelization through preaching. Percival was a scholar
of marked distinction — ' the greatest Tamil scholar Methodism
has ever had.' * He translated the whole Bible into Tamil,
and his version of Church Offices in the same language is still
used in the Jaffna District. His convictions were strongly
in favour of educational work, and in 1834 he opened in Jaffna

1 Transferred back from Calcutta.
8 Ceylon and its Methodism, by T. Moscrop and A. E. Restarick, p. 98.

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 35

the Central School, afterwards raised to the grade of a College.
This was followed by a Girls' Boarding-school, which was
placed under the management of Mrs. Percival, and a Training
Institution, afterwards considerably enlarged and developed.
He also added to the number of village schools already in
existence, forming in each of these a Junior Society-class, in
which last he was a firm believer. Thus it is to this Missionary
that the Jaffna District owes the educational policy which
has been an incalculable strength to the Church, and no small
blessing to the community outside it. But in carrying through
his scheme of educational work Percival was strenuously
opposed by his colleague, Mr. Stott, who criticized severely
the vernacular attainments of Missionaries who had been in
the District, and protested against the custom of setting men
when they first arrived to preach in English or Portuguese.
He was as strong on the side of vernacular preaching as Percival
was on the educational side. Happily he found in Batticaloa
a sphere in which he could carry out his principles to excellent
effect. A new church was built, and a gracious revival of
religion followed ; so that within five years the membership
had increased from forty to a hundred and seventy.

Both of these great Missionaries were right. Where they
each failed was in not seeing that the one work was comple
mentary to the other. Time was to show their successors
that the Church which neglected education robbed itself of
its greatest strength, while education without the witness
of the preacher remained barren of its best and most desirable
fruit ; that the schools were in themselves an evangelistic
agency of the highest value, while the element of evangelical
appeal would be ignored by the Church to its own peril. We
need not regret the strenuous conflict of opinion between twa
able and devoted Missionaries. It left the District with both
departments of the one work firmly established to the abiding
honour and ever-increasing efficiency of the Church. In 1847
Mr. Stott returned to England, and in 1862, as we have seen,1
he took up work among the Tamils of South Africa.

Percival was at pains to keep the Committee in London
fully informed as to his educational projects, and in 1836 he
wrote at length describing his operations in and around Jaffna.
His educational scheme was well conceived and efficiently

» Vol. IV., p. 303.

36 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

carried through. It must not be thought that his interest
in this department made him indifferent to vernacular
work, and the general interests of the District over which
he presided. The whole letter is instinct with the feeling
of one who never loses sight of the fact that he is engaged
upon the work of God, and that that work is many-sided.
He had no doubt that the best means to its furtherance was
the removal of the pall of ignorance which hung over the minds
of the people. To him the letting in of light was always to be
welcomed by the Missionary, in whatever way that light
might come. Thus we find him rejoicing over the establish
ment of schools by the Government, and in the generous pro
vision made by Churches in America for the furtherance of
this work. He held that all such enterprises were to be wel
comed, even though they might mean a diminished number
of scholars in his own schools, since they brought a larger
number of youths to ' a high state of preparation ' for receiving
the gospel. Provision was also made for furthering the work
among the Tamils. The schoolroom used for public worship
before the erection of the new chapel in 1823 was put into good
order, architecturally improved, and dedicated to the worship of
those whose mother tongue was Tamil. This was done in 1836,
and the new chapel was called ' St. Paul's,' to distinguish it
from the Pettah chapel. It was said to be at that time the
handsomest building in Jaffna.

The attendance at public worship was, however, far from
satisfactory, and it is clear that Percival's hope gathered round
the coming, rather than the present, generation. The poverty
of the members of the Church did not induce this feeling of
despondency so much as did the spiritual apathy of the people ;
but that poverty was very great, and in one school at least
it was found necessary to provide food and clothing for the
girls attending it. In 1838 Miss Twiddy was sent out by the
Ladies' Society for promoting female education in China and
the East, under conditions to which we have referred else
where.1 This was a welcome harbinger of a still more efficient
provision to be made by our own Church in England. The

1 See p. 78. Miss Twiddy was the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Twiddy, a
Minister in the home work. She subsequently married the Rev. Peter Batchelor, one
of our Missionaries in Xegapatam, and served with him not only in India, but also in
South Africa. For the part played by her in the formation of the Women's Auxiliary
the reader is referred to Vol. IV., p. 20.

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 37

emphasis thus laid by Percival upon education did not pass
without challenge, and in 1840 the Rev. J. Crowther attended
the Synod in Jaffna with a view to reporting to the Committee
his impressions of the situation in Jaffna. He found himself
in hearty sympathy with the Chairman, and he further urged
the Committee to comply with the request already made by
Percival for an adequate Assistant to be sent out ' betimes,'
to relieve the Chairman of work which threatened to occupy
his whole time and strength, to the detriment of other parts
of his duty as Chairman. It was not, however, until 1847
that the Rev. J. Robinson was sent out to assist Mr. Percival.

We must now turn away from Jaffna to consider the two
other centres of missionary activity in the District. The work
at Trincomalee had up to this time been disappointing. Very
little had been accomplished on the native side of the work.
Missionaries who had been appointed to this station had found
it to be as much as they could do to meet the spiritual needs
of the European and Burgher population. Mr. Stott had not
hesitated to advise the abandonment of a station in which so
little had been done for the Tamil population, but Trincomalee
was the chief naval and military station in the Indian Ocean,
and Methodist tradition — if nothing else — entailed a ministry
to those in the two Services who had entered into its fellow
ship. The ideal arrangement would have been the appoint
ment at Trincomalee of a Chaplain in addition to a Missionary,
but the slender staff maintained in the District made that
impossible. The ' full time ' will come for Trincomalee, as
it comes to all fields in which the good seed of the Kingdom
has been sown, but up to the present this centre of operations
has not shown the same progress as we shall record in the other
centres of missionary activity in this District.

Batticaloa has had quite a different history. Up to the
year 1840 there had not appeared in this station any marked
movement towards Christianity. The attendance at public
worship was almost entirely confined to Europeans and
Burghers. But, as we have already recorded, with the appoint
ment of Stott there came a time of great spiritual awakening,
and ' many were added to the Lord.' From that time the
Church in Batticaloa continually increased, until in the
centenary year it was, in point of numbers, the strongest in
the District. At one time it seemed as if it would be given

38 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

to this Church to gather much harvest from among the wild,
shy, and benighted people known as the Veddahs. The
origin of these is still a matter of dispute, but whether they be
aborigines of the island, or remote connexions of Aryans or
Dravidians, the fact is that they are a people whose life has
remained, or become, rudimentary. Without fixed homes
they inhabited caves in the rocks, and subsisted on what they
could shoot with the bows and arrows which were their only
weapons. They were ignorant of the most elementary ideas,
and it was with the utmost difficulty that they were taught to
count more than three, even when their own fingers were
pressed into service for arithmetical calculation. Some effort
had been made by Roberts to get into touch with them, but
Stott went into the jungles to seek them out, and after awhile
some of them expressed a wish to become Christians. Villages
were formed for them by a Government only too glad to bring
them under some sort of civilized life. They began to cultivate
the fields, and to adopt a more settled form of life. Too much
was made of these initial successes, and when presently
difficulties arose their confession of Christ was found to rest
upon very insecure foundations. Nothing can take the place
of a sense of sin and of the deliverance wrought by Christ as
the basis of Christian experience, and this appaiently had not
been realised by them. Many of the converts relapsed into
their former barbarous manner of life, and efforts to bring them
to a better mind became greatly restricted. If Stott had been
able to remain with them it might have been possible to keep
them together, but on his withdrawal the work among them
fell into abeyance. The schools set up on their behalf at
Bintenne were given up in 1847.

The Rev. James Gillings was appointed to follow Stott at
Batticaloa, and preparations were made for beginning work at
another place in the Circuit. The Station selected was
Caravore, twenty-four miles from the island of Puliantivo, the
central Station of the Circuit. Land was cleared and a small
house was built, while material for a larger one was collected.
The Missionary to occupy this new centre was already on the
field in the person of the Rev. John Kilner, 1847-1875, who
was, in the providence of God, to leave an abiding mark upon
the whole Methodist Church in North Ceylon. But 1848-1849
was the year of ' the Reform Agitation,' and the effect of this

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 39

was reflected in a peremptory letter addressed to the Jaffna
Synod by the Secretaries. The most stringent instructions
were given that under no circumstance whatever would any
expenditure above the amount provided for in the grant be
allowed. The expenses of the schools were to be cut down
by one-third ; and, worst of all, Kilner was removed from
Ceylon, and appointed to Manargudi in South India. If these
reductions proved to be insufficient, any deficiency occurring
was to be met by a reduction in the amount allowed to each
Missionary towards his personal expenses. It may be imagined
that such a letter brought dismay to the minds of those who
received it, men who were beginning to hope that at last after
many disappointments the Church committed to their care
was beginning to move. In no part of the District was the
blow felt to be heavier than it was in Batticaloa. Happily
the services of John Kilner were not lost to Ceylon. The
account of his return and of his administration will meet us
later on.

In 1851 the Rev. P. Percival returned to England, and it
was hoped and expected that after the usual furlough he would
come back to direct the affairs of the District. But during
his furlough a serious disagreement arose between him and
the Secretary in London, the issue of which was the withdrawal
of one of the ablest Missionaries ever sent to the East. Over
the details of this deplorable dissension it is best that the veil
of reticence be drawn. Administrative Boards are often
swayed by impressions which are unreal and prejudices which
bring little credit to those who entertain them. The issue
was deplorable. Shortly before he left Ceylon Percival
published his last report, and if any hesitation be felt as to the
character of his administration, a perusal of that report would
at once remove it. It is an exposition of missionary policy
pursued during a quarter of a century, which stamps its
author with the mark of a statesmanship only too rare in
either the councils of the Church at home or on the field itself.
At a time when there seemed to be a complete lack of vision,
and when all that could be called ' policy ' seemed to be an
ever shifting adaptation of action to circumstance, this man
saw the Church of the coming days, and bent his marvellous
strength and his most tenacious purpose to provide for it. He
was never deterred by difficulty, nor did he allow himself to

40 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

be either embittered by suspicion or estranged by opposition.
He kept an unwavering course through the twenty-five years
of his ministry, and left behind him a record of service which
all may envy, and few will be able to emulate. Only considera
tions of space prevent our inserting this missionary manifesto
in its entirety. A single passage must suffice :

Too little attention by far is paid to the training of missionary
agency, whether native or European. Large expectations are often
associated with ill-accommodated systems. In many instances weighty
responsibility is imposed upon inexperience. Missionary machinery,
costly and promising, though at best imperfect, sometimes suffers de
rangement from the inconsiderate introduction of newly imported
principles. Too much haste is occasionally exhibited in the formation
or abandonment of evangelistic plans. Great advantages would result
from a careful, wise, and timely revision of all that concerns our various
instrumentality. There is needed, in order to due success, a more
concentrated and intense application of the means at our disposal. In
our District we want a greater division of labour, a thoroughly uniform
and uninterrupted course of action, and a more diffusive system of
evangelical teaching by simple and inexpensive native agency.

After his resignation Percival returned to the East, and was
for some years connected with the University of Madras. He
was followed in the administration of the District by the Rev.
R. D. Griffith.

The decade of the 'fifties was not distinguished by any
marked feature either in policy or in development of the Church.
John Kilner returned to Ceylon in 1853, and served first at
Batticaloa, and then at Trincomalee before he was called to
the Chair of the District . Griffith did not remain long in Ceylon .
After four years he removed to Madras, but left almost as soon
as he arrived there, in the hope that by returning to England
his life might be spared. That hope was not fulfilled. He
passed to his reward shortly after his arrival in England, in
1856. His best work was done in India, and there we shall
see him in the fullness of his strength. James Gillings also
returned to England early in this period. His term of service
in this field lasted from 1844 to 1850. Later on he retired
from active work, but was able to accomplish a useful service
during his retirement at Coonoor in South India. Another
Missionary whose service in Ceylon was cut short by failure

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 41

of health was the Rev. William Barber,1 who was sent out
in 1852 to take up educational work in Jaffna. Compelled
to leave Ceylon, he took up work in South Africa in 1858, and
there he served the cause that was dear to his heart for several
years. The burden of administration fell upon the shoulders
of the Rev. W. Walton after the withdrawal of the Rev. R. D.
Griffith, and the Church increased slowly but continuously,
the membership rising from three hundred in 1850 to four
hundred and seventeen in 1860. The recurrence of smallpox
and cholera during this period was a severe check to the
numerical increase of the Church. In the year 1854 there
were more than eight thousand seven hundred cases of the one,
and two thousand two hundred cases of the other.

In the 'sixties we come to what was probably the most
formative period in the history of Methodism in North Ceylon,
and it is coincident with the administration of the Rev. John
Kilner, who succeeded the Rev. William Walton in 1859. We
have seen that in later years, when Kilner visited South Africa
as Secretary of the Society, his visit was described as ' a sort
of hurricane/ ' under which figure was conveyed the idea
of a vigorous administration, which dispelled the mists of
hesitation, and revealed to the Church the elements of strength
which it possessed. The same characteristics may be found
in his work during the fifteen years in which he directed the
affairs of the Methodist Church in North Ceylon. No more
accurate description of his administration could be given than
that which appears in the work to which we have already
made reference.8 The Rev. A. E. Restarick says :

John Kilner was the greatest of North Ceylon Missionaries, and
one of the greatest of Methodism, not merely by conspicuous gifts and
a commanding personality, but because he was a strategist. He
recognized the importance of land acquisition and buildings, made it
a doctrine, forced the Home Committee to see its value, and aroused
enthusiasm amongst his people and outsiders. There is no part of
the District which does not bear John Kilner's stamp upon its property.
He took over the school policy, and saw the number of scholars quad
rupled even in his last four years ; the meaning and necessity of un
remitting evangelism was a doctrine he never ceased preaching. The

1 Mr. Barber was the father of the Rev. VV. T. A. Barber, D.D., whose work in
China will be before us in a later chapter of this volume, and who subsequently
occupied the Chair of the Conference in England.

• Vol. IV., p. 322. * Ceylon and its Methodism.

42 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

whole area was mapped out in Circuits for future development, and
his prescience, though not infallible, has justified itself. Plans of
self-support, self-government, self-propagation were watchwords con
stantly impressed upon the native Churches, and the phrases became
part of their vocabulary and their ideals. . . . But Kilner's chief
contribution to Tamil Methodist history was the enforcement of the
truth that Tamils must be reached by Tamils. . . . He made the
training of men his life-work.

The Methodist Church can point in each field of its service
to one or more men who, under the guidance of God, have given
form and spirit to the Church, and in North Ceylon the man
whose name stands first is certainly John Kilner. The Cey-
lonese Ministry of after years in this District was formed,
instructed, and furthered by this great missionary statesman,
and it has comprised Ministers of whom any Church may be
proud. In nothing does he reveal his statesmanship more
clearly than in fastening upon this as the essential element
in a Church indigenous to the field, and rejoicing in a life and
power of its own. In 1875, when he returned to England,
there were eighteen ordained Ceylonese Ministers. When he
succeeded to the Chairmanship there were only two. But,
in addition to these, he introduced a sub-ministerial order
which had no existence at all in 1860. In 1875 we find no
less than twenty-one Catechists at work in the District. The
membership had risen to more than seven hundred. New
Circuits, too numerous to mention, appeared in the annual
reports, and the whole complexion of the work had changed.
Suspicion, bickering, and complaint had disappeared ; a genuine
enthusiasm for the work of God pervaded the whole Church.
Education was recognized as a matter too valuable to be
neglected, and it was never more fruitful in results, while
evangelistic work was unremitting and characterized by a
genuine concern for the souls of men. Such may be the effect
of a great personality, strong in natural resources, and con
secrated to the service of Christ in the great mission fields of
the East.

To the historian it is a great temptation to quote at length
from the letters and public utterances of John Kilner during
this period ; ' temptation/ because he can do so only at the
expense of curtailing space already too small for the record of
our work in the East. The terse effective phrase, the masterly

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 43

grasp of a great policy, the clear vision of a goal sought with
relentless purpose, the infectious enthusiasm which pervades
every utterance, such characteristics compel more than
admiration ; they uplift the heart of the reader until he reaches
the source of all in ' the depth of riches both of the wisdom
and the knowledge of God — for of Him, and through Him,
and unto Him, are all things. To Him be the glory for ever.
Amen.'

The self-support and self-organization of the Church was one
of the themes upon which Kilner never ceased to insist. It
was also the declared policy of the administrative Board in
London. If the former says : ' I feel as though we, as a
Mission, have done more if we inoculate one mind with these
principles than if a dozen converts, so called, were made to
hang lovingly and lazily on the neck of the Mission in sickly
infantile imbecility/ the latter would reply ' The sooner you
connect native brethren with the management of the sums
employed for native agency, the better for them and the work.
Accustom them to husband and distribute the fruits of their
own diligence, and be careful to show that our great desire is
to see all the gifts and virtues of the Ministry embodied in our
brethren, and all offices and honours partaken of by them.'
The Church, both in its Ministry and in its laity, was quick
to respond to this new attitude towards them. In Jaffna
and Batticaloa the different congregations were able to support
their own pastors, and in Point Pedro and Trincomalee steady
progress in the same direction was made. Of another Circuit,
Kalmunai, which speedily arrived at the same goal, a little
more must be said. It will be remembered that preparations
had been made by which it was hoped that John Kilner, then
newly arrived in the District, might be sent to Caravore,
twenty-four miles south of Batticaloa. That scheme fell
through ; but in 1873 Kalmunai, a small town in the same
district, was occupied, and a Ceylonese Minister, the Rev. W.
M. Walton, was sent to take up the work with the help of a
catechist. The population here is scattered in villages, but
in many of these Christian communities are to be found, and
the Circuit takes rank numerically after Jaffna, Batticaloa,
and Point Pedro. An attempt to extend on the western coast
was made in 1872, when an agent was sent to Manaar. But
this could not be considered to be ' effective occupation.'

44 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

Later on, a far more hopeful movement was made in this
direction.

Kilner's educational policy was as clear-sighted and as
vigorous as any part of his work. He considered schools to
be evangelistic centres of the highest value, and schools for
girls especially seemed to him to be of first importance. He
speaks of them as having ' effected a revolution.' Here again
we may trace his governing purpose :

To graft a principle on the stock of national life ; to make some
form of Christian agency indigenous ; so to place, govern, and manage
a school, as that when the individual Missionary or his wife must leave
it to others, it shall yet live on and grow in power. . . . The reliable
agency is the agency of growth, rather than that of foreign construction.

These are wise words ; they may well stand as a fixed principle
of missionary policy for future generations. The issue of his
endeavour may be seen in the record made when he left the
District in 1875. When he became Chairman the total number
of schools in the District was twenty-two ; when he left Ceylon
there were fifty-two schools for boys, and forty-three for girls,
while the aggregate number of pupils attending had risen from
little more than a thousand to four thousand eight hundred
and forty-nine. The value of these schools to the Church
may be partly measured by the verdict given by the Rev. A. E.
Restarick, and endorsed by all who have had any knowledge
of our work in Ceylon : ' Seventy-five per cent, of our converts
have been gained, more or less, in connexion with educational
work.' Yet even to-day there are those who persist in drawing
a sharp line of demarcation between evangelism and education
on mission fields. The Women's Auxiliary sent their first
representative to Ceylon in 1861, when Miss Eacott was
appointed to Jaffna. She remained at work in Jaffna for only
three years, and five more passed before her successor, Miss M.
Cartwright, was sent out. After that appointments to this
District were more frequent. As in South Ceylon, the chief
effort of the ladies sent out was made in the schools, and our
frequent references to the results of that work will have
indicated the supreme value of their service. In addition to
the work in the schools, medical work has been taken up by
ladies sent out by the Auxiliary in Trincomalee, Batticaloa,
and Kalmunai. Such work has had the effect of relieving a

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 45

vast amount of suffering, and by winning the confidence of
women in those centres it has been no small factor in further
ing the work of the Church. It must also be borne in mind
that, as in other fields, it is this particular ministry which
forms the best means of affecting the Muhammadan popula
tion. Aggressive work among the ' Moormen ' of Ceylon has
yet to be taken up by the Methodist Church, and the way is
being admirably prepared by the work of women on behalf of
their suffering sisters. General aspects of the work of the
Auxiliary will appear in the chapters describing the South
Ceylon District. It is a work of peculiar beauty and
delicacy. Much of it will always remain unseen, untabulated.
But its effects remain deep in the hearts of women, now
secluded in their homes, when they recall that in their girlhood
they heard the voice of Him through whom reverence, freedom,
and honour have come to womanhood.

In 1872 Kilner inaugurated an elaborate scheme ' for
completing the Plant for Native Agency in the Tamil District.'

This scheme embraced the building of

1. Eight houses for Ceylonese Ministers.

2. Sixteen boys' vernacular schools.

3. Twenty superior ditto, to be used as school chapels.

4. Twenty girls' vernacular schools.

5. Eight superior ditto to be used as school chapels.

6. Two premises for training Agents at Jaffna and Batticaloa.

It was estimated that the cost of these buildings would
amount to three thousand pounds, two-thirds of which were
to be raised locally. It was hoped that within four years the
scheme would be completed, and this was actually accomplished,
and remains a conspicuous instance of executive power in
putting through a comprehensive plan, the dimensions of
which might have dismayed men of less faith and capacity.
Kilner left Ceylon in 1875, by which time his administrative
ability was so fully recognized that in the following year he
was appointed one of the secretaries of the Society. In this
office he remained until his death in 1888.

The additions made to the Staff during this period include
men of force and Christian character. They were the Revs.
W. H. Dean (1854-1863), W. Talbot (1858-1864), W. Walton

46 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

(1860-1866), Luke Scott (1863-1867), J. Mitchil (1863-1866),
Edmund Rigg (1865-1890), J. O. Rhodes (1866-1880), and
J. M. Brown (1866-1882). Of these we shall presently record
the closing services of Edmund Rigg and J. O. Rhodes.1 That
of J. M. Brown will be before us in the history of the Church
in Calcutta. Of the others, Luke Scott returned to England
with health permanently impaired ; Walton died in Madras
while on his way to England, and Mitchil died of cholera in
the epidemic of i866.a

Kilner was followed in the Chair of the District by Edmund
Rigg, and the Staff was greatly strengthened by the arrival of
the Revs. E. Martin, Ed. Strutt, W. R. Winston, and J. G.
Pearson. These were all men of outstanding personality, and
their selection for this field indicates the position which it now
held in the interest of the home Church. Winston was ap
pointed to Point Pedro, the possibilities of which had been
long acknowledged, but the occupation of which had been
delayed pending the increase of the Staff. As soon as
permanent occupation was established, the membership rose
from thirty-eight in 1876 to more than a hundred in 1902.
In 1877 another Missionary was sent to the District, and proved
to be an addition destined to add greatly to the well-being
and development of the Church. This was the Rev. G. J.
Trimmer. He was first appointed to take charge of the Central
School in Batticaloa, and when Rigg returned to England in
1890 he was called to follow him in presiding over the church
in this District.

In the decade which followed the retirement of John Kilner,
educational work made rapid strides. By this time it was
recognized by all that the schools afforded the best recruiting
ground. Conversions among the young people were of fre
quent occurrence, and the work among the girls especially
was as fruitful in results as it was beautiful in character. In
facility for establishing Boarding Schools for girls, the Mission
aries in Ceylon had an advantage which they had not been
slow in turning to worthiest use. The caste rules which in
India forbade the admission of non-Christian girls to such
schools did not obtain in Ceylon, and all Circuits of any standing

1 See p. 85 of this Volume, and p. 471 of Vol. IV.

1 Mr. C. W. Mitchil, the brother of the above, served for many years as a Lay
Missionary in China. See pp. 540 ff.

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 47

had one or more of them. Few girls passed through their
classes without being brought distinctly under the spell of
Christ, and in very many instances the confession of allegiance
was not withheld. Winston at once began to move in the
direction of securing such an institution at Point Pedro, and
in 1878, the Girls' Boarding School and Training Institution
was begun. Within a very few months after the opening of
the school there were cases of true conversion. Even at
Kalmunai, where the surrounding villagers were backward,
education under Edward Strutt began to take a prominent
part in missionary operations, and in 1882 the Rev. G. Trimmer
was able to begin the erection of a Girls' Boarding School.
In 1879 Rigg added a department for training to the Jaffna
Institution — a wise provision in view of the call for teachers
from all parts of the District. But early in the 'eighties the
anxieties of the Missionaries were very great. A new educa
tional code, proposed by the Government, demanded better
provision in school plant as well as higher qualifications in
the teaching staff if Government grants were to be obtained,
and the District was committed to the scheme for extension
put forward by John Kilner. Yet this was the moment when
the Committee in England began to diminish the funds sent
out for Native Agency. Doubtless it was hard for Kilner,
as Secretary, to send out such instructions to his former
colleagues, but it was heart-breaking for these to receive them.
At such times — and they are frequent on Mission fields—
the men on the field can but hold on tenaciously to such work
as proves to be most fruitful, and give themselves to prayer
that a spirit of enlightenment and generosity may be given
to the Church at home.

In 1883 the Jaffna District was called upon to forgo the
ripe experience and the balanced judgement of J. M. Brown
in favour of the Calcutta District, over whose councils he was
now to preside. But the strength of the District was such
that it could afford to accept the decision of the Committee.
Before this it had been able to meet the need of other parts of
the field. We shall see how it sent Missionaries, both Tamil
and European, to work among the Tamils of South Ceylon,
and contributions were made from time to time to help Cir
cuits in South India. The hive had come to swarming time,
and its workers were appearing in other fields. All this would

48 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

have been impossible but for the spiritual and intellectual
qualities of the Tamil Ministry. Kilner's policy was bearing
immediate fruit.

At the close of the decade the personnel of the European
Staff had almost entirely changed from that which was on the
field at its commencement. Edmund Rigg remained as a
link between the present regime and that of John Kilner, but
he was just then on furlough, and not one of his colleagues,
with the exception of Winston, had been on the field when
he took up the administration. But the men sent out — and
perhaps the hand of John Kilner is to be seen in this also —
were men of both gifts and grace. The fruit of their service
was not slow in appearing. Others followed, and in W. J. G.
Bestall, Joseph West, and A. E. Restarick, the District secured
men who worthily sustained the high tradition of service
passed on to them, and left in their turn a distinct mark of
individuality upon the work committed to their care. The three
mentioned were on the field in 1885, and before the next decade
had run its course Sheldon Knapp, W. T. Garrett, Gabriel
Leese and E. M. Weaver, men of equal force and Christian
character, had joined them. The Jaffna District, during the
last two decades of the century, was well manned.

The organization of the Church was now far advanced.
Its ministry, indigenous to the country, was ready and equipped.
The faithful presentation of Christ in the schools had resulted
in a community which had felt the power of His name. There
remained but one thing without which indeed all this would
have been nothing but elaborate machinery. It was given
in the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the Church. A
revival of religion took place in 1887. Many former pupils
came forward to confess the Christ whom they had first met
in their class-rooms. Half-hearted or insincere members of
the Church were quickened, and to many a Missionary there
was given again the baptism which brings refreshment, stimu
lus, and power to jaded spirits. This revival had its message
for other Districts in the East. In India the news of its coming
brought hope to mission workers. If these things could be
among the Tamils of Ceylon, why not in Negapatam, Madras,
and Bangalore ?

The Circuits on the eastern coast were now proving to be
the more fruitful section of the District. In 1866 Rigg had

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 49

expressed the opinion that if Batticaloa were thoroughly worked
it would prove to be rich in producing the treasures of the
kingdom of Christ, and it was during the year after that the
Church in that station pledged itself to the support of its own
pastor. In 1874 Brown established a Mission Press in the
same centre, and year by year its output of Tamil books con
tinued to increase, an invaluable adjunct in view of the large
number of vernacular schools in the District. The same year
saw the opening of a Girls' Boarding School with a department
for training, and this was extended by Trimmer in 1886. Six
years after this was reported to be one of the best of its kind
in the island. The Kalmunai Circuit was at first designated
' Batticaloa II,' and was closely associated with that centre,
but after it became effectively occupied its development
proved to be so rapid that it soon came to have an individuality
of its own. In the same letter in which Rigg had spoken
hopefully of Batticaloa he has described Kalmunai as ' dis
tinguished for its ignorance and superstition. Here the devil
holds undisputed sway.' But in 1879 Edward Strutt, on
leaving Kalmunai, speaks of it exactly as Rigg had spoken
of Batticaloa. ' I believe it to be the most interesting, as it
promises to be the most fruitful, of any of our stations.'

In 1891 Sheldon Knapp opened an industrial school at
Kallar, and this was moved to Kalmunai four years after
wards. Kilner had wisely secured enough land at the latter
place for a ' Settlement,' and this centre afforded better
provision for industry than Kallar. Here too the wave of
revival refreshed and invigorated the Church. From Kalmunai
the wave passed to Tirukovil, a place specially sacred to the
worshippers of Siva, and in this stronghold of Hinduism a
Christian Church came into being, and promised large increase
in the immediate future. In the centenary year the three
contiguous centres of Kalmunai, Kallar, and Tirukovil reported
a Church membership of over a hundred in each village, while
the Christian community of the three aggregated more than
nine hundred and twenty. Such was the fruit gathered in
the field where Rigg had said that ' the devil held undisputed
sway.' A new disputant had entered the lists, and victory was
with Him.

Manaar on the west coast of the island is not the least interest
ing of the centres in North Ceylon where work has been begun,

50 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

and it will be no surprise to those who know of its past, and
are able to forecast its future as a town, if it become one day a
station of first importance to the Methodist Church in this
district. We shall elsewhere1 indicate the attempts made to
secure a footing in the town and the selection of this centre
by the Jaffna Home Missionary Society as the sphere of its
operations. For a long time the efforts made seemed fruitless,
The Roman Catholics were in power, and were determined to
remain so. The Methodists of Jaffna were tested by being
called to maintain an apparently unremunerative effort. At
last, however, their reward began to appear in the formation
of a small society. Then villages in the vicinity, which had
broken away from their Romish teachers, appealed to the
Methodists for help, and in 1908 the Rev. W. C. Bird was
appointed to Manaar. From that time the Church has
increased both in number and in influence. In the centenary
year there was a Methodist community of a hundred and
forty-eight. The Church in Jaffna had reason to rejoice in
this fruit of their effort, and the fuller harvest has yet to be
gathered.

Puttur for many years seemed to be the least remunerative
station in the District, but in 1896 there appeared a new agency
in Puttur. We have seen the Order of Wesley Deaconesses
at work in West Africa, and its appearance in Ceylon was
followed by similarly happy results. Puttur is a small town
attached to the Jaffna Circuit. Work had been carried on
here for many years, but the results were not commensurate
with the efforts made, and the cause of this was not hard to
find. The town was distinguished from others in its vicinity
by the fact that it was the residence of Saivites who adhere
more strictly to the rules of caste than others of their co
religionists in Ceylon. The people of Puttur were fairly
prosperous, and materialism, added to their religious tenets,
deadened their ears to the message of the Gospel. A far more
responsive people were found in Achchelu, a village only two
miles distant from Puttur, but the two villages between them
returned only fourteen members in the report for the year 1896.
It was decided that the Deaconesses should take up work
in this centre, and as they acquired the use of Tamil the range
of their activities increased. In addition to work in the schools

1 See p. 103.

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 51

they opened a small dispensary, and soon they were able to
begin evangelistic work in the surrounding villages. Since
their coming there has been a marked increase in membership,
but the most significant feature of their work has been the
building of a hostel which is to form the home of an Order of
Ceylonese Deaconesses. If in the hearts of these there be
kindled the flame that burns in the hearts of their sisters from
the West, this indigenous Sisterhood may soon become an
important factor in the winning of Ceylon for Christ. The
Hostel was opened in the year with which our record closes,
and it may well prove to be the beginning of a great chapter
in the history of the Methodist Church in Ceylon.

In 1893 the Rev. G. W. Olver paid an official visit as Secre
tary to Ceylon, and the visit is of importance as marking an
important development in the organization of the Methodist
Church in the island. For that visit led to the forming of a
Synod of the whole Methodist Church in Ceylon. Each of the
three Sinhalese Districts, which were then distinct, sent four
representatives to the Synod while the Jaffna District sent
eight. It was also arranged that every five years a General
Synod for all India and Burma and Ceylon should be convened.
Such Synods have proved their value in co-ordinating the
work done on the different fields, and they bring together
workers who, separated as they are in Districts remote from
one another, miss the mutual help derived from Methodist
fellowship. When the time comes for a Conference of the
Methodist Church in these three countries, the rudiments of its
organization will be found to be already in existence. In
1895 the first annual address of the Ceylon Synod was issued
to all Methodist Churches in Ceylon. That address, sub
scribed by the names of Samuel Langdon as Chairman and
Joseph West as Secretary, after recording the numerical
position of the Church and acknowledging the work of God
in their midst, reminds the members of the moral and spiritual
responsibilities following upon so great a development,
and it reflects the anxious care of the Pastors assembled
in Synod for the increase of those fruits of the Spirit which
mark the living Church. The membership returned for the
whole island was three thousand eight hundred and eighty-four,
with one thousand one hundred and thirteen on probation
for membership.

52 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

In the 'nineties the Church continued to grow, though the
annual increment was small. It must be remembered, how
ever, that before any increase could be shown losses caused
by death or by migration had to be made good. That there
was no diminution in vitality is shown by the increasing
strength of Home Mission Societies in the several Churches.
In addition to such support of their own Ministers as we have
already indicated, the different societies were at this time
contributing more than two thousand rupees annually for the
furtherance of missionary work among their own countrymen,
and a generous contribution to the Twentieth Century Fund
was freely given. The European staff showed no great change
during this decade. The most considerable was to be found
in the removal of the Rev. J. West to undertake the Chairman
ship of the Negapatam District in South India. The Jaffna
District may well claim a certain distinction in this, that when
Missionaries of experience and of administrative ability were
required for responsible positions in other Districts, they were
often found in the Jaffna District. We have already recorded
the removal of the Rev. J. M. Brown to Calcutta. After his
departure, the Rev. W. R. Winston was sent first to South
India, and shortly after to open a new field of missionary
operations in Burma ; and now the District was called upon
to spare the Rev. J. West for a post of honour and respons
ibility. All of these will be before us again when we come to
describe the work in their new spheres of labour. Throughout
the decade the Rev. G. J. Trimmer continued to serve as
Chairman. Of new recruits there were only two — the Rev.
G. B. Robson (1898), and the Rev. E. O. Martin (1899). A
strong plea for reinforcements was sent to Bishopsgate, and
in response to this, the Revs. A. Lockwood and W. M. P. Wilkes
were sent out in 1901, while the Rev. W. C. Bird followed in
1906. Early in the decade, the District found itself sufficiently
strong to do what it had long desired, and the Rev. E. M.
Weaver was set free from Circuit responsibilities to serve as
' a touring Evangelist.' Good results were immediately
forthcoming, and later on this work was taken up by the Rev.
G. B. Robson ; but in 1905 the staff was again depleted, and
this special and most promising work was given up. The
year 1905 was indeed ' a year of disaster.' The Rev. Gabriel
Leese had returned from furlough the year before, and a period

THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON 53

of fruitful service seemed open before him, but in the month
of May he was attacked by rheumatic fever and quickly passed
to service otherwhere. The Rev. A. E. Restarick, who had
served in this field since 1885, was obliged to return to England
for family reasons. It seemed as though his efficient and
devoted service in Ceylon had closed, but happily, after seven
years in England, he was able to return, and in 1922 he was
still in the island fulfilling the duties of chairman in the South
Ceylon District. Last of all came the sudden breakdown of
the Rev. E. M. Weaver, who had been in this District since
1889. The loss of so many experienced Missionaries was a
serious set-back to the work. To fill the vacancies thus
caused, the Revs. J. A. Barker, J. W. Garforth, and W. C.
Tucker1 were sent out in the same year.

The Church continued to grow, a certain sign of its
inherent strength. Trincomalee now joined the Churches
which supported their own Minister, and it was evident
that Point Pedro would soon do the same. How
rapidly the principle of self-support was being adopted may
be judged from this, that in 1908 the Churches in Jaffna and
Batticaloa both claimed the privilege of supporting two
pastors. Another very hopeful feature of this period was the
growth of the unpaid agency of local preachers. But the very
growth of the Church brought its own difficulties, and the need
of yet further premises for the due housing of the agencies of
the Church made itself felt in every centre.

The numerical statistics of the North Ceylon District in the
centenary year are as follows :

Chapels . . . . . . . . . . 24

Other Places for Preaching . . . . 116

European Missionaries . . . . . . 10

Ceylonese Ministers . . . . . . 18

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . 29

Local Preachers . . . . . . . . 198

Church Members . . . . . . . . 1,774

Members on Probation . . . . . . 825

Other baptized Adherents . . . . 1,307

Children in Mission Schools . . . . 11,222

1 Mr. Tucker died within a year.

54 THE TAMIL DISTRICT— NORTH CEYLON

With these statistics we bring our story of the Methodist
Church in North Ceylon to its close. Much that would lend
grace to the story, and bring gladness to the heart of the
reader, must remain untold. The beauty of Christian life in
those who have been brought out of darkness into marvellous
light, the sacrifice offered not by one or two, but by a great
company of those who having known Jesus freely gave to
Him their all, the wonder of the work of the Spirit of God in
the hearts and minds of men and women, working for long
years unseen, unsuspected, until in some moment of experience
which broke through the jealously guarded reserve ' streams
broke forth in the desert ' — all this must remain untold,
save on such occasions as when the Missionary returning
from the field where he has seen God manifestly revealed
in human life, tells the story of the triumph of the Cross in
Ceylon.

But even the bare account of the historian may show the
amazing progress of a Church which at its commencement
seemed beset with every sort of difficulty, but when a hundred
years had closed recorded a triumph all the greater because its
earliest days seemed to promise failure rather than fruition.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

Harvard and Clough in Colombo — The Mission Press — Depression —
Disagreements with the Committee — Educational Work — Close of the
first Period — John Gogerly — Chairmanship of Benjamin Clough — Dr.
Kessen — Joseph Rippon at Galle — Robert Spence Hardy — The Occu
pation of Kandy — A Tamil Mission in Colombo — Wellawatte — Chair
manship of John Scott — The Galle District — Conflicts with Buddhists —
Richmond Hill — The Kandy District — Stephen Langdon — Educational
Work — The Province of Uva — The Missionary Spirit in Ceylon —
Statistics.

WHILE the ethnological history of North Ceylon is easy to
read, that of the south is shrouded in the mists of the ages.
What was the origin of the Sinhalese people ? Are they to
be considered to be the aborigines of the island, or were they,
like the Dravidians of the north, invaders from India ? The
fact that their language is so largely dependent on Sanskrit
seems to indicate some connexion with the Aryan movement
from Central Asia into India, but if this connexion be estab
lished it must have been at a time when Sanskrit was still a
spoken language. Whoever they were, they exhibit a marked
racial integrity, and a social and religious tenacity which
enabled them to survive the disintegrating effect of the
Dravidian invasion, and the long-continued and devastating
wars, in the course of which they were driven into the remoter
south, finding protection in the all but impenetrable belt of
forest which they placed between them and their enemies.
The ruins of great cities and abandoned systems of extensive
irrigation remain to indicate resources in wealth and industry
which must have been very great. Deprived of their estab
lished possessions, they still remain after two thousand years
distinct in race, language, and religion, from those who drove
them from their great cities, and laid both palace and temple

56 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

in ruin. That they profess and observe the laws of Buddha
does not necessarily mean that they came to Ceylon after the
appearance of that great teacher. Nothing is more remarkable
in the history of Buddhism than the rapidity with which it
spread over nearly the whole of India, and the Ceylonese
may have received it in the same way and as whole-heartedly
as did the Thibetans and the Burmese. But their acceptance
of Buddhism accounts for one strongly marked feature in
their character which has proved to be no slight difficulty
in the way of the Christian Missionary. Strictly speaking,
Buddhism is not a ' religion ' but a rule of life. If, as some
assert, we cannot say that it denies the existence of God, it
certainly ignores Him, and it does this so completely that the
human heart, robbed of the Divine, avenged itself upon its
great teacher by putting him into the place of the ignored
Deity, until now it worships the one who taught that worship
was futile. In matters of faith Buddhism was elastic to a
degree, and its votaries might subscribe to this or that without
ceasing to be disciples of their great teacher. They listened
first to the Romanist and then to the Dutch Ecclesiastic,
and professed acceptance of the teaching of both without
feeling that they had apostatized from Buddhism. Even after
baptism they observed the rules of Buddha, and took part in
ceremonies which were certainly not Christian. They
accounted for this contradiction in practice by regarding
Christianity as ' a Government religion,' which varied with
the nationality which happened at the moment to be supreme.
Their submission was merely official ; they still remained
Buddhists at heart.

When the British came into possession of the island, and
Protestant Missionaries began to appear in Ceylon, the latter
were sometimes deluded by this attitude into thinking that
the victory of their cause was immediate, and they were
correspondingly depressed when they found that no reliance
could be placed upon the easily offered acceptance of their
teaching. The Sinhalese, on the other hand, were puzzled
when they found that the formal profession did not necessarily
lead to official preferment, and that they were now confronted
by a challenging faith which accepted no compromise. It
was only gradually that the Missionaries came to see that the
siege which they were laying to the heart of the Sinhalese

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 57

was likely to be long and arduous. In Colombo and in other
places several priests came forward in the early days of the
Mission to seek admission into the Christian Church, and the
first and most remarkable of these furnishes us with a good
case in point. ' The Ava Priest ' — George Nadoris de Silva,
as he was afterwards named — belonged to one of the higher
grades of the artisan class, and early in life attracted attention
by reason of his intellectual attainment. He was sent to
Burma to continue his study of Buddhism, and after three
years in that country he returned with the title of ' Raja-
Guru,' and was maintained in a style more akin to that of
royalty than to that of a priest who had renounced the world.
He was visited by the Governor — Sir Robert Brownrigg —
and was introduced by the Governor's Chaplain to Mr. Harvard
and Mr. Clough. After inquiry he professed his conviction
of the truth of Christianity and was baptized in the Fort
Church, but does not seem at any time to have been of any
great service to the Church, though he was of use to the
Government during the Kandian War. There was con
siderable misgiving in the mind of many as to the reality of
his conversion, and later on we find such Missionaries as Fox
and Hume taking exactly opposite views on this matter, and
expressing them with characteristic vehemence. It was
perhaps unfortunate that on the day after his baptism Nadoris
was invested by the Governor with the coveted rank of
Mudaliyar, even though his intellectual attainments and
personal influence may have justified the appointment. Such
an investment tended to confirm the opinion that the way to
Government office lay through the Church. Several other
priests came forward with similar professions, and presently
the Missionaries, taught by experience, came to regard such
approaches with suspicion. In time, when the moral and
spiritual aims of the Church came to be better understood,
such cases became less frequent.

We have seen that Mr. Harvard was appointed to Colombo
while still remaining in Bombay. It was not until the spring
of 1815 that he was able to begin his work in Ceylon. He was
received, not only with courtesy, but with the spirit of friendliest
sympathy on the part of all officers of Government in Colombo.
The Governor and Lady Brownrigg, the Chief Justice (Sir
Alexander Johnston), Archdeacon Twistleton, and the

58 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

Governor's Chaplain, the Rev. G. Bisset, all seemed desirous
of co-operating with him in his great purpose, and eager to
identify themselves with the Missionaries. They made the
way easy for them to begin their work, and frequently joined
them in their worship, while Lady Brownrigg and Lady Johns
ton took an active part in the work of educating girls. No
stronger contrast could be found than the attitude to Mission
work taken up by these representatives of Church and State
when compared with that of similarly placed officials in the
West Indies. It is true that the vested interests of slave
owners did not create in Ceylon the obstacle which they pre
sented in Jamaica, and the accompanying moral failure in
tone and outlook did not pervert the vision of Government
administrators as it had done in Trinidad. Time also had
enabled those in authority to estimate the value of the
Methodist movement in the national life. But these things
do not account for all the sympathy shown to the pioneer
Missionaries in Ceylon. Here authority was happily in the
hands of earnest and devout Christian men, who were far
removed from sectarian jealousy or moral indifference.

The founders of the Methodist Church in Ceylon were happy
in those with whom they had to do. Not least in helpfulness
and Christian feeling was the British soldier who met them in
Colombo. Sergeant Andrew Armour has already been men
tioned in this History.1 In 1798 he was transferred from
Gibraltar to Madras. Like many other Scotchmen he had
great linguistic gifts, and it was said that he could speak in
thirteen different languages. In Madras he learned Tamil,
and became so proficient in the use of that language that he
was sent to Colombo to act as interpreter in the Supreme Court.
After a while he obtained his discharge from the Army, and
was put in charge of the principal Government educational
establishment in Colombo, and in 1812 he was licensed to
preach in Portuguese and Sinhalese. When the Missionaries
of his own Church, for whose coming he had so often prayed,
arrived, they found in the loyal affection of this Methodist
soldier a welcome which, we may be assured, was not the
least valued of those which they received. His name appears
in the Minutes of Conference 1816 and 1817 as ' Assistant
Missionary,' but for some reason or other he reverted to his

1 See Vol IV., p. 418.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 59

former position under Government. He was ordained Deacon
in the Anglican Church in 1821, and Priest in 1825, but he
never ceased to regard with unbounded affection the Church
through whose ministry he had been brought to Christ. He
died in 1828, with the respect and affection of all who knew
him.

With such friendly co-operation available Harvard was not
long in getting to work. With Mr. Armour's help a house
was taken in the main street of the Pettah. Services were
held at first in the Dutch Church, but before long Methodists
had a church of their own built after the model of Brunswick
Chapel, in Liverpool.1

Large sums were contributed locally towards the cost of
erecting this, ' the first Methodist chapel in Asia/ Europeans,
Burghers, and Natives all showing a desire to further the work
of the Missionaries. A Society-class was formed, English,
Dutch, Portuguese and Sinhalese speaking in their own
tongues, and Mr. Armour interpreting for each — a striking
reproduction of primitive Christianity. Preaching-services
were held in many of the villages near Colombo, interpreters
being recruited from among the pupils of Mr. Armour's
' Seminary.' With the Missionaries were associated the
Government ' Proponents.' All the workers met every
Friday for mutual help and encouragement, as well as to
arrange the Plan of Appointments for the following week.
A Sunday school was begun, and was largely attended by
children from all classes of the community, most valuable
help being given by officers of the Government. Thus most
of the agencies peculiar to the Methodist Church were in an
incredibly short time in full operation, together with the
unusual addition of hearty co-operation on the part of those
who were not members of the Methodist Church.

One part of the equipment for the Mission to the East
included in the comprehensive preparation made by Dr.
Coke consisted of a small printing-press, and Harvard now
proceeded to get this into working order. The Dutch press
taken over by the British Government was found to be in
such a state of neglect that it could not be used, and several
efforts were made to secure the service of Harvard in this

1 The architects' plans for this building were found among the documents of
Dr. Coke.

60 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

department. He was first offered a post as superintendent of
the Government press, and when he declined, an offer to
purchase the Mission press was made to him. This, too, was
declined. Finally Harvard, anxious to show some recognition
of the kindness received from the Government, offered to put
the Government press into working order, and this was done
at the cost of much physical exertion. A considerable amount
of press material not required by the Government was put
at the disposal of the Missionaries, who thus added to the
efficiency of their own establishment. This press was to
prove a fruitful source of misunderstanding and trouble
between the Missionaries and the adminstrative Board in
London, but it proved to be invaluable in giving facilities for
the distribution of Christian literature at the very beginning of
the Mission. After a few months Harvard was joined by
Clough, McKenny1 being left by the latter in charge of the
work in Galle, and the two men, closely united in friendship,
abundant in labours, and wholly devoted to the Master in
whose service they were employed, laid broad and deep the
foundations of the Methodist Church in Ceylon. Some
indication of the difficulty of maintaining a close connexion
with the London Committee may be found in the fact that
though Dr. Coke's party left London towards the close of
1813, it was not until June, 1815, that any communication
from the Mission House was received. In that month, how
ever, McKenny arrived in Ceylon from South Africa with the
information that reinforcements were close at hand, and
presently Samuel Broadbent, Robert Carver, John Callaway,
and Elijah Jackson arrived. In July, 1816, the whole staff met
in what was called ' The General District Conference.' The
appointment of the Missionaries to the several centres was as
follows :

JAFFNA. — James Lynch, T. H. Squance, Robert Carver, and Daniel

Theophilus (Assistant Missionary).

TRINCOMALEE. — Samuel Broadbent. (One to be sent.)
BATTICALOA. — Elijah Jackson. (One to be sent.)
GALLE. — G. Erskine, J. McKenny.
COLOMBO. — W. M. Harvard, B. Clough.
MATURA.— J. Callaway, W. Lalmon (Assistant Missionary).

1 See Vol. IV., p. 240.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 6r

It was reported that there were twenty members of Society
in Colombo and twelve in Galle.

When financial matters came under review it was found that
Mr. Harvard had not been able, owing to ill-health, to prepare
a balance-sheet. In this statement we have the beginning of
the financial confusion which ensued, and which was the
occasion of so many severe reprimands from the authorities
at home, leading eventually to the recall of James Lynch.
It is easy to see how this confusion arose. There was no
fixed allowance at this time ; the brethren were permitted to
draw on the Secretaries as necessity arose. The consequence
was a complication which exhausted the energies of several
men before it was unravelled. Many discrepancies had
to be overlooked before order was resolved out of the financial
chaos which prevailed in Ceylon during the first years of our
work.

The case of William Lalmon, a Burgher physician of Swiss
descent on his father's side, gave cause for discussion. Lalmon
was converted to God under the first sermon preached by
Squance in Galle. He was recognized as an ' Assistant Mis
sionary,' and the question arose whether the rule which
forbids marriage before the close of probation should in this
instance be enforced. It was finally decided that it might in
this case be relaxed. Lalmon proved to be a most faithful and
reliable Minister. He served his Church for forty-six years,
dying at last in 1863. A few years after this the Missionaries
were again encouraged by another convert entering the
ministry. This was Don Cornelius Wijesingha, and he con
tinued to serve from 1819 until 1864.

The favourable reception accorded the Missionaries, acting
upon temperaments which were perhaps too sanguine, led to
a certain amount of disillusion, followed by depression. Accus
tomed as Methodists to look for immediate conversions, they
were not prepared for the long struggle which awaited them
when they challenged the strength of Buddhism and Hinduism
in their hoary citadels. Some of the adults who had responded
to their appeals proved disappointing, and gradually it came
to be seen that fruit adequate to their hope and effort would be
long in coming. But this disappointment was to lead to
their adopting a line of advance which was to give to the
Church in after years a strength and a power of appeal which

62 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

could not have been obtained otherwise. Disappointed in
the adults, the Missionaries turned to the children. This is
how Harvard l describes the inception of the educational work
which has covered the island of Ceylon with a network of
schools, from which a great harvest has been gathered.

Disappointed in the sanguine expectations we had at first indulged
of extensive and rapid conversions of adult natives to the faith of
Christ, Mr. Clough and myself regarded with feelings of peculiar
pleasure the desire manifested by the inhabitants of various villages
to place their children under our care, persuaded that our hopes of the
future must be, in a very considerable degree, founded on the cultiva
tion of their minds and the formation of their character. We there
fore digested a plan for the establishment of a regular chain of Native
Mission Schools, and submitted it by letter to our brethren at the
different stations.

At first the brethren were far from unanimous in accepting
the scheme, but Harvard and Clough, nothing daunted,
proceeded to put it into effect in the neighbourhood of Colombo,
and by the ensuing July fourteen schools had been opened,
with nearly a thousand children in daily attendance. In
the Synod of 1815 the matter came up for discussion, and
was cordially adopted. The Colombo brethren were appointed
' General Superintendents of the schools/ and were requested
to furnish the stations in which they had not been commenced
with the requisite instructions.

It was also proposed that an ' Academy' for training
Native Ministers should be set up, but the Committee refused
to sanction this proposal, as they considered the scheme to
be premature.* It is thus clear that the Missionaries on the
field were convinced of the urgency of education in their
scheme of work, and later years were to justify their conten
tion.

The Mission press in Colombo was by this time working at
full pressure to provide the books required in the schools, as
well as other publications taken up on behalf of the Bible
Society, and the Anglican Church in Calcutta. A version
of the New Testament' in Sinhalese had also been prepared

1 Harvard's Narrative, p. 303.

'They consented, however, to the opening of a ' Seminary for pious Natives,'
though a ' Boarding-School for gentlemen's sons ' was not allowed.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 63

by Clough with the assistance of two converts from the Buddh
ist priesthood. An edition of two thousand was printed,
and work on the Old Testament was at once begun. Other
useful publications followed, and so rapidly did this branch
of the work grow that it was thought desirable to send out
from England a layman who should relieve the Missionaries
of this burden. The layman chosen was Mr. Daniel John
Gogerly, a notable name, the name of one who was in the
providence of God to bring light and strength beyond all
calculation possible at that time to the Methodist Church in
Ceylon. Mr. Gogerly arrived in 1818, and under his direction
the efficiency of the press rapidly increased. A Book-room
was added to it, and there was great confidence expressed
that this would become a fruitful source of ' local income.'
But the management of its finances was far from being efficient.
The Missionaries were not men of any training in business,
and presently the accounts of the two branches of this enter
prise were found to be in hopeless confusion. To add to the
embarrassments of the Missionaries, the home Committee took
objection to the printing of a Sinhalese-English dictionary
which had been prepared by Clough, and which had been
put through the press during a period when work happened to
be slack, without waiting for the consent of the Committee.
But though no explicit sanction for the printing of the diction
ary had been given, the Committee in its Report for 1819
had spoken of it as being in the press, and had described it
as ' A work which will be of incalculable importance to
Missionaries and to civilians in acquiring this difficult but
comprehensive language.' In spite of this tacit acceptance of
the work the Secretaries addressed a letter of severe censure
to the Synod of 1821, speaking of the dictionary as ' a literary
speculation ' and insisting that ' Mr. Clough had no more
right to make the expense of the work a charge on the Book-
room than he would have to charge it to the private account of
an individual.' The Committee seems to have been unduly
alarmed at the publication of this work, and it certainly chose
an unfortunate instance for insisting upon its sanction being
obtained before any new venture was undertaken. The
Synod made a spirited reply, and warmly protested against
the insinuation that Mr. Clough had been diverted from his
ministerial duties by undertaking this literary work, of which

64 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

the Secretaries had themselves spoken in terms of warm
approval. It must be confessed that the Committee does
not come out of this unhappy controversy with credit, though
on the whole question of financial administration they had
just ground for complaint. After much labour and vexation
of spirit, both in England and in Ceylon, the finances of the
press were put upon a more satisfactorj^ basis, and it continued
to do excellent work. For many years it was the only estab
lishment of its kind engaged in producing Christian literature
for the Ceylonese, and in later years a great tribute to its
work was paid by Dr. Murdoch when he said :

The Wesleyan Missionaries in Ceylon have occupied to a large
extent the place which Carey filled in Bengal. They have prepared
Sinhalese dictionaries, written the ablest and most learned treatises on
Buddhism ; have had a large share in the translation of the Scriptures ;
and in various other ways they have materially aided Sinhalese
literature.1

A long and painful conflict between the Mission House and
the Missionaries followed. It must be confessed that the
Missionaries, while highly endowed with all spiritual gifts,
were lacking in business ability and experience of financial
transactions ; but it must be allowed them that the guidance
given them by the Secretaries had been indefinite, and financial
perplexity obtained in England as well as in Ceylon. The
mysteries of ' exchange ' were painfully felt by the Secretaries,
and later on we find the Committee deciding with meticulous
care that nineteen spoons should form the equipment, as far
as that useful implement was concerned, in each Mission
House, and solemnly voting the sum of nine shillings to
provide some suffering brother with a table, and yet, though
informed of the giving up of the Theological Institution in
Colombo, proceeding to budget for its expenses for the following
year and forwarding the amount to the Chairman. Doubtless
if the Committee could have foreseen that this band of young
men would be left without the help and guidance of Dr. Coke
their instructions would have been more explicit, but the
fact remains that no instructions were given as to how the
expense of building chapels, schools, and houses was to be
met, and the Missionaries naturally concluded that for such

1 Ceylon and its Methodism, p. 80.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 65

objects they might take up bills drawn on the Society at home.
They proceeded to do this, to the great alarm of the Committee,
confronted with an expenditure which they had not anticipated.
The conflict culminated in a censure passed on Mr. Lynch for
failure in administration, and at the Synod of 1822 the latter
tendered his resignation and asked for permission to withdraw
from the Mission. The Synod, however, pressed him to
preside, and he did so, but continued to urge his request for
permission to withdraw. With great reluctance this was
granted, but the Synod protested that ' for so excellent, so
upright, so conscientious a character as is Brother Lynch to
return from a work, which is the delight of his soul, under
disgrace, is one of the most distressing events that could
happen to a Christian Mission/ and they declared their wish
to resign their appointments unless the vote of censure was
withdrawn. So near to disaster did the Mission to Ceylon
come in the earliest years of its history. Lynch finally returned
to Ireland in 1824. His personal contribution to the work
has come before us in another chapter.1 Gradually confidence
was restored, and the Synod of 1823 was a happier one in
consequence.

Other difficulties arose in Ceylon, as they did elsewhere,*
over the vexed question of ' stationing.' The Committee
claimed finality for the appointments which they made, but
the Missionaries on the field claimed that they were in a better
position for deciding what stations should be occupied, and
what men should be sent to them. They also pointed out — •
what, indeed, was obvious enough — that in the twelve months
which must pass before any point of view could be put before
the Committee, and their ruling obtained, circumstances
might arise which would make it impossible to carry
out the Committee's instructions. They therefore claimed
a measure of discretionary power in this matter, but
only after many years and much conflict was that power
obtained.3

In 1818 reinforcements from England arrived in the persons
of the Revs. W. Buckley Fox (who shortly afterwards succeeded
Lynch in the Chair of the two Districts), R. Newstead, G.
Erskine, and T. Osborne, and in consequence it became
possible to occupy new centres of work. One of these was

1 See pp. 176 ff. * See Vol. IV., p. 264. * See Vol. I., p. 174.

66 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT—SOUTH CEYLON

Kalutara, a town situated on the coast south of Colombo.
The first Missionary stationed here was Mr. Fox, but it has
proved to be the least successful of the many circuits estab
lished in the course of years. For some time no Missionary
was stationed here, but in 1895 it was reoccupied by the Rev.
J. Passmore. In the centenary year it had a Christian com
munity of 374.

About an equal distance to the north of Colombo is the
town of Negombo, and here a strong Circuit has come into
being, while other circuits in its vicinity have been formed.
Many of the most prominent Missionaries in South Ceylon
have served in Negombo. For a time this Circuit, too, was
without a European Missionary, but in 1884 it was reoccupied,
and it has now arrived at the stage in which it provides the
support of its own Minister.

Matara is the most southernly station on the coast, and with
Galle between that and Kalutara Mr. Fox considered that he
was justified in claiming that ' We occupy the whole of the
unbroken line of the Sinhalese coast (I mean that which is
inhabited), and all our future extension must be into the
interior.' The occupation was scarcely ' effective,' but the
centres were well chosen, and something must be allowed to
the buoyant Missionary on the ground of hope.1

In the year 1818 two Missionaries were sent to Ceylon to
take up special work in the schools. These were the Revs.
Alexander Hume and Samuel Allen. The design of the
Committee was that these men should exercise a general
superintendence in all educational work carried on in the
District, and should move from Circuit to Circuit, introducing
and maintaining sound methods of school management and
education. The scheme was excellent in theory, but proved
to be impracticable for two reasons. To carry it out effectively
would have entailed a large increase in the grant made for
educational work. The introduction of improved appliances
alone would have meant, in the many schools of the District,
a considerable expenditure in addition to that already incurred,
and as the existing grant for this department did not meet
half the expenses of the schools, it was difficult to see how the
scheme could be financed. Yet the two men had been sent

1 In post-centenary years, the work at Kalutara, especially that among the Tamils
employed on rubber estates, was most successful.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 67

out with apparently no provision on the part of the Committee
of the means of carrying into effect the purpose of their mission.
There was a second difficulty. The appearance in a Circuit
of some external authority criticizing, condemning, and
altering arrangements for which the locally appointed Mis
sionary was responsible would have created an intolerable
situation, and the Missionaries in the Circuits were unwilling
to accept such supervision. Last of all, it was found impos
sible to staff the different Circuits already in existence unless
the two men were themselves appointed to stations. But
in that case all idea of their itinerating from Circuit to Circuit
would have to be given up. Allen was sent to Galle and Hume
to Matara. The latter proved to be a man of great ability
and of distinct force of character. Profoundly disappointed
in not being able to accomplish the special work for which
he had been chosen, he nevertheless gave himself up to the
work which seemed feasible. He became a fluent and accurate
speaker of Sinhalese, and was most efficient as a Missionary.
He was also a tender-hearted and generous helper to brethren
in distress. It was characteristic of his frank and direct
method of expressing himself that he made no secret of his
intention to return to England when his first period of service
was ended, and he carried it into effect in 1827. Allen, too,
was a man of considerable ability, but unhappily he came
under discipline by the Synod, and was suspended for two
years. It is greatly to his credit that he accepted that disci
pline and proved the sincerity of his repentance by drawing
himself clear from the intemperance which had threatened
him with disaster. He was reinstated in the ministry, did
good work in the Theological Institution while it was in
existence, and on his return to England in 1832 served with
acceptance in home Circuits.

The year 1819 marks the close of the first period of missionary
work in Ceylon. In that year the island was divided into
two Districts — the Sinhalese or Southern District, and the
Tamil or Northern. In the former W. B. Fox was the first
Chairman of the separated District ; in the latter James
Lynch continued to administer the District while residing in
Madras. At this point we may pause to consider briefly one
or two of those Missionaries who were eminent in work and
character, and the first of these must be the two men who were

68 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

the companions of Dr. Coke on his last and memorable mis
sionary journey, and who were so closely associated in friend
ship and service in Colombo. The names of Harvard and
Clough will always remain as those of the founders of the
Methodist Church in that city. They were very similar in
tastes and in attainments. Both possessed literary gifts of
no mean order, and these were used without stint in giving
to the Church in its earliest days what was indispensable to
its growth and development — a Christian literature. In 1816
it seemed as if their close and happy fellowship was likely
to be broken when the home Committee proposed to transfer
Harvard to Calcutta, but this proposal was so strongly opposed,
not only by his brethren, but also by the Governor of Ceylon
and other officials, that Harvard remained in Colombo until
failure of health in 1819 compelled his return to England.
No finer or truer appreciation of this Missionary can be given
than that which appears in a letter written by Archdeacon
Twistleton to Clough with reference to the proposed removal
of Harvard to Calcutta The Archdeacon speaks of his
recognized discretion, and goes on to say : ' His countenance1
and manners and amiable moderation, joined with unaffected
piety, are all calculated to exalt the Wesleyans in the opinions
of men. He is the organ of communication between the
brethren and His Majesty's servants, and we positively cannot
spare him.'

He was a gentleman of considerable refinement, and the
affectionate courtesies of his demeanour were added to a high
standard of personal religion, while his love for Christ irradiated
his whole life. After some years in English work, during which
he was at one time designated for Madagascar but never went
there, he sailed for Canada in 1836, and in the following year
was made President of the Upper Canada Conference. In
1846 he again returned to England, where he became the
Governor of Richmond College, and passed to his rest in 1857.

Benjamin Clough had been specially recommended to Dr.
Coke as his travelling companion, and has been characterized
as ' a man of warm heart, open mind, great energy, sound
judgement, and entire fidelity.'2 He excelled in literary work,
and, while he took his share in the ministry of preaching, gave

*He was considered to be the facsimile of George Washington in appearance.
*Moscrop and Restarick, Ceylon and Us Methodism, p. 81.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 69

himself up to this department with such ardour that on more
than one occasion he came near to a complete breakdown in
health. He became Chairman of the Sinhalese District in
1826, but found financial administration, which at that time
was most complicated and exacting, a burden hard to carry.
He speaks of it as ' a horrible job,' which made his life miserable,
and his sensitive nature felt acutely the censure of the
Secretaries in London. In 1821 he says, in a letter to Mr.
Lynch : ' I intend, by God's help, to have no more to do with
drawing bills,' but the exigencies of service compelled him to
shoulder the unwelcome burden until 1838, when the state
of his health made it impossible for him to continue the service
which he loved. His gifts were many and of high quality,
but they did not include that of financial acumen, and it would
have been better for himself and for the work if he had never
been called upon to administer the affairs of the business
department of the District. He held his brethren in honour,
and was greatly beloved by them. In 1838 he retired from
Ceylon and served at home until 1852, when he withdrew from
active work. The following year saw the close of a life of
singular beauty and of great value to the Church.

Robert Newstead is another of these pioneers of Methodism
in Ceylon whose name may well be held in recollection and
honour. He was one of those sent out to reinforce the com
panions of Dr. Coke, and in 1818 we find him stationed in
Negombo, with which his name will always be associated.
He was a man of a very tender heart and of a most affectionate
disposition, and he possessed the Methodist passion for souls
to a remarkable degree. He, too, had considerable literary
gifts, and in 1820 he had prepared a version of the New Testa
ment in Portuguese, a work covering nine hundred and fifty
pages, every word of which had been written by his own hand.
Unfortunately his health was very uncertain, and it is to be
feared that the hardships of pioneer life, together with his
excessive labour, further impaired it. In 1819 he seemed to
be in a condition of hopeless decline, and had obtained per
mission to return to England, but by the time this reached him
he had somewhat recovered, and courageously remained at
his post until 1825. When the country of Kandy came under
British rule, and the way was opened thereby for the entry of
Missionaries, he became possessed with a burning desire to

70 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

claim that country for Christ. He conceived that Negombo
was on the line of advance towards Kandy, and in 1819 he
began work at Riligala, and the following year was at Kurune-
gala, twenty-five miles farther into the interior. It was found,
however, impossible to develop these stations. For some time
efforts were made to work them by means of Catechists, but
the attempt was far from successful, and in 1829 the two
stations were abandoned. The true line of advance was in
another direction, and the full time for occupying Kandy had
not yet come. But Newstead's heart was all but broken by
this failure. It was unfortunate that a man of his delicate
physique was called to be a pioneer in three different stations.
In one of his letters he says : ' A brother who comes now to
either of these stations will find a house, a chapel, a Society,
schools, and translations, and helpers in his work, not one of
which existed on those stations before.' He complains that
an excess of work of this kind has made him despair of ever
becoming proficient in his use of the vernacular. When in
1825 he returned to England he served as Missionary Secretary
for one year (1826-1827). He lived for many years after his
return, dying at last in 1865, a brother greatly beloved.

One other Missionary may be mentioned here, though his
fuller power was not realized until later. In many respects
Daniel John Gogerly was the greatest of all those who have
served in Ceylon. He came to Colombo in 1818 as a layman
to take charge of the Mission press, and at once gave evidence
of great qualities of mind and of missionary zeal. In 1823 he
entered the Ministry, and for forty years after that he served
the Church to whose ministry he was then admitted. He soon
became known — and that far outside the pale of the Methodist
Church — as the greatest authority in Pali literature, and as
the most redoubtable antagonist whom Buddhist priests have
ever encountered.1 He was accustomed to preach in three
languages, and excelled in each. He became Chairman of the
Sinhalese District in 1838, and in administration as in scholar
ship he had no peer, while his capacity for rule was balanced by
a very kindly heart. He continued to hold office until his
death in 1862. His published works on Buddhism are held

Speaking at the Missionary Meeting of 1861, the Rev. Joseph Rippon said:
' I do not believe there is a Buddhist priest in the whole island of Ceylon who dare meet
our able and learned Chairman in a public discussion.'

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 71

to be authoritative and unsurpassed. His work will be con
tinually before us in later pages.

W. B. Fox was a Missionary of great intellectual powers
which were highly cultivated. His diligence and power of
application were most marked ; it is said that he had some
knowledge of twenty languages. As an administrator he
was painstaking and enthusiastic. This latter quality some
times betrayed him into an optimism for which there was
insufficient ground, as when in 1826, speaking at a meeting of
the British and Foreign Bible Society, he said : ' I will venture
to predict that nothing like half a century will pass ere it be
said that there are no heathen temples and no idols remaining
in Ceylon.' Perhaps, after all, his optimistic temperament
served him in good stead, for he succeeded to the Chair of the
District at a time when the Mission was passing through a very
serious crisis. During the whole time of his administration
there was continuous conflict between the Secretariat and the
District on the question of finance. The men on the field were
dispirited, and the arrival of letters from the officers of the
Society came to be a matter of apprehension rather than an
occasion of encouragement. Under such circumstances it
can scarcely be wondered at that some Missionaries did not
conceal their wish to return to English work, and the feeling
of disappointment and discontent was not likely to further
the interests of the work in Ceylon. The faults were, as is
usually the case, on both sides, but the resultant misunder
standing was deplorable. The two Missionaries sent out for
special educational work were equally disappointed at finding
themselves unable to carry out the scheme which they had
accepted in England, and as late as 1822 Hume complains that
he had not received up to that time any answer to the many
letters he had written to the Secretaries. Probably these were
quite at a loss to know what course they should take in view of
the fact that their plan had proved unworkable. The uncer
tain policy of the Committee is further illustrated in a proposal
to transfer the Chairman, Mr. Fox, to Bombay in 1822. The
proposal was, however, successfully resisted. Fox was
struggling to reduce the financial chaos to something like order,
and to remove him just then would have been calamitous. His
efforts were often thwarted by recalcitrant individuals. A
personal attack made upon him by one of these happily came

72 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

to nothing. The fact is that, however disappointed some
might be, retrenchment was inevitable. It was felt with
special severity on the side of the educational work of the
District. The schools were reduced by fifty per cent., not more
than six being allowed in any one Circuit. It was not until
fifty years had passed that the schools in South Ceylon num
bered what they did in 1822. The light in many a village was
put out. Other retrenchment was secured by closing the
Book-room, and some were in favour of also giving up the
work of the press. Fox strenuously opposed the latter.
' Shutting the doors would be the death-blow to the Mission/
and so the press was saved to continue its invaluable work.
Fox returned to England in 1823, and for a year or two
McKenny acted as Chairman until Clough returned from
furlough.

During the 'twenties, in spite of depression among the
Missionaries, the Church continued to grow. The number of
Church members in 1826 was two hundred and thirty-nine.
During the decade new names appear on the roll of Missionaries.
Robert Spence Hardy, William Bridgnell, Richard Stoup, and
Alfred Bourne all arrived. The two first-named lived to do a
great and effectual work in Ceylon, but the two last-named,
both of them men of great promise, died within a few years of
their arrival.

During this period new chapels were built and old ones were
replaced by larger and better buildings. Perhaps the most
valuable extension of property was made in Colombo, when in
1825 an estate in Kollupitiya was purchased. So great was
the general appreciation of its advantages that it was described
as ' a sanatorium for South India and Ceylon.' In 1826 an
institution for training Native agents was opened in Colombo,
and Clough had brought back with him Mr. Exley, who, it
was hoped, would be able to take charge of this department,
but the latter was disappointed with the work offered him,
and returned to England before the close of the same year.
In 1829 the institution was closed.

Kurunegala continued to give much anxiety. Some of the
Missionaries were for abandoning the station, while others were
equally strong in pressing that it should be retained. The
neighbourhood was unhealthy, and was swept by epidemic
disease more than once. The population became scanty,

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 73

and in the absence of a Missionary the house and furniture
rapidly deteriorated. Hume was strongly in favour of
.abandoning the station, but in 1826 Clough and Me Kenny
visited it and gave a favourable report on the prospects of
work in that neighbourhood. It was finally abandoned in
1829. 1 The Rev. Joseph Roberts, Chairman of the Northern
District, visited Colombo in 1827, and was surprised to find
so large a Tamil population in the city. The discussions he
held with the Missionaries in Colombo on that subject led
•eventually to the taking up of work among these, and we shall
find later on a Tamil Mission in Colombo.

The year 1829 was one of bereavement in South Ceylon.
Allen lost his child by death, and Hume lost both wife and
child. Gogerly also was called to mourn the death of his wife,
and at one time the whole family of Wijesingha was stricken
down with sickness, from which one child did not recover.
But the heaviest blow fell when the Rev. R. Stoup was taken
from a work into which he had poured the fullness of his great
and varied powers. In 1827 he was stationed at Galle, and
the account he gave then of his labours in that Circuit only
makes one wonder that his health could stand such a strain
for as long as it did. From Galle he was removed to Colombo,
where he took up work in the Institution, and there can be
little doubt that his early death was due to his too lavish
expenditure of himself in any work that was given him to do.

The condition of the Sinhalese District during the 'thirties
was far from encouraging. The only additions to the staff
were the Revs. Elijah Toyne and Thomas Kilner, both of whom
withdrew from the Mission at the close of their first term of
service. In 1831 Clough returned from furlough to take up
the administration of the District. His first report was far
from cheerful. There were only four Missionaries in the
District, Hardy being absent on furlough, and Gogerly having
been compelled to take a sea voyage in the hope of recovering
his health. The affairs of the printing house were in dire
confusion, and both Matara and Kurunegala are described as
' Derelict Stations.'2 By the end of the year, however,

1 Work was begun again in 1896, but it was finally handed over to the C.M.S. in
1918.

2 A further illustration of the lack of connexion between the Mission House and
the District is shown in that the official Report of the year after this states that ' the
work at Kurunegala is in an encouraging state.'

74 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

Gogerly had returned with his health restored. He was sent
to the ' Derelict Station ' of Matara. It was certainly a
difficult station to work. Buddhism was strongly entrenched
in that district, and for a long time progress was painfully
slow. The appointment was, however, to prove a great
opportunity for Gogerly. He resided near a famous Buddhist
temple, in the library of which were valuable manuscripts, and
it was owing to his researches in these that he became not only
a finished scholar in Pali, but also a learned and trenchant
antagonist to those who defended Buddhism either on the
score of its philosophical tenets or on that of their moral
application to life.

The Training Institution was another cause of disappoint
ment during this decade. After the death of Mr. Stoup it was
found impossible to send any one to fill his place. Yet the
necessity of training a local Ministry was more apparent than
ever, and an arrangement was made by which each Missionary
was to select one or two youths of promise in his Circuit, take
them into his house, and, as far as was possible, incorporate
them into his family life, giving them what instruction he
could. It was very far from being an ideal arrangement,
and was open to obvious objections, but that the Missionaries
should have consented to it speaks volumes for their apprecia
tion of the need and for their self-sacrifice in attempting to
meet it. The results, as might have been foretold, were far
from satisfactory, and an attempt was made to reopen the
institution in Colombo, but this again failed, and it was not
until the Institution found a home at Richmond Hill, in the
Galle Circuit, that this branch of the work was established
and started upon its proper course. In 1838 the long, laborious,
and loving service of the Rev. B. Clough came to an end.
With his retirement the last of the pioneer Missionaries who
had set out with Dr. Coke disappeared from Ceylon, and the
Methodist Church entered upon a new chapter of its history.
Clough was followed in the Chairmanship by the Rev. D. J.
Gogerly.

In the 'forties the Methodist Church in South Ceylon increased
numerically from seven hundred to twelve hundred. There
was a steady consolidation of power and a wise distribution of
energy. The outstanding feature of this decade is the contrast
to be found between the relative positions of the European and

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 75

the indigenous Ministry. At the commencement of the
decade there were four Europeans — Gogerly, Hardy, Bridgnell,
and Kessen. Associated with these were nine Ceylon Ministers
and twelve Catechists. At the close of the decade the number
of Europeans had dropped to two, while the number of the
Ceylon Ministers had risen to ten. There were also fifteen
Catechists. To meet the need of this increased Native agency
the plan was adopted of circulating among all the Ministers
quarterly letters, in which all might describe their work and
share both their hopes and their fears. They thus became
acquainted with the character of each other's labours, and the
separated members of the Methodist fraternity were made to
realize their union in the service of their Lord and Master.
This admirable system was dropped after a few years. An
attempt was made to revive it in 1864, but with no great
success.

The great and honourable distinction of Ceylon Methodism,
both north and south, among the different fields in which the
Methodist Church had begun its work, now began to appear.
It is to be found in the policy of raising and training an in
digenous Ministry. This, it is true, has been the professed aim
both of the home administrative Board and of each Mission
District, but few of the several fields in the East have so
persistently and successfully endeavoured to reach this great
objective. The Missionaries in Ceylon started with a great
advantage. They had in the Burgher community material
such as was not to be found in India or in China, and the
Ministers recruited from this community have, for the most
part, worthily adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour in all
things. Many of them have been men of learning as well as
of piety. They have shown themselves to be exemplary
pastors, and they have accepted it as their crown of rejoicing
that they have been called to suffer for the sake of Christ. But
the Ceylon Ministry has been made up also of Tamils and
Sinhalese, and these, no less than the others, have served with
complete devotion. In South Ceylon during the Chairmanship
of Mr. Gogerly as many as twenty Sinhalese became Ministers
to their own countrymen. Only limitations of space prevent
our recording in these pages the beauty of their character
and the fruitfulness of their work.

The issue of this policy of developing a local Ministry has

76 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

amply justified the men who followed it. They trusted those
whom God called to minister to His Church, and their trust
was not betrayed. When the time of stress came, and the
European staff in South Ceylon was reduced to the Chairman
and one other, the Church still continued to grow, and its
growth was to be attributed, under God, to the noble service
rendered by Burgher and Sinhalese Ministers, the former
decreasing in numbers while the latter continually increased.
Their ministry was owned of God in the deliverance of hundreds
from the bonds of superstition, and in the building up of the
Christian Church. It is instructive to note that this Ministry
came into being in days when there was no Theological Institu
tion, and no school for higher education conducted by Mis
sionaries. But the latter had covered the field of their labour
with a network of schools, and there were few members of the
Church in later days who did not trace the first impulse which
brought them to Christ to some gracious influence which had
rested upon them during their schooldays.

The policy which had taken long views in missionary enter
prise was rewarded by an assured harvest of highest quality.
In the centenary year the number of Ceylonese Ministers in
the Sinhalese District was thirty-four, against sixteen Mis
sionaries from England, and there were, in addition, thirty-six
Catechists at work in the District. Before that year came
regulations had been laid down for Ceylon Ministers. Their
reading and study were examined and reported for four
years after probation had been completed. Those who
were not Superintendents of Circuits might attend the
Synods, but only on the invitation of the Chairman,
and they were not entitled to advise or vote in the
Synod until they had completed fourteen years of service.
In 1843 a grant of a hundred pounds was received from
the home Committee, to be used in the training of agents.
Six of these were Normal Students under Kessen at Kalutara,
two were Catechists in preparation under Hardy at Negombo,
and two were preparing for the Ministry under Gogerly. The
need for an increase in this agency was painfully felt, and a
letter from Gogerly describes a petition from thirteen villages
round Morotto — or, to adopt the modern spelling, Moratuwa —
asking for instruction in the truths of Christianity. The
ancestors of these villagers had been professing Christians in

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 77

the time of the Dutch occupation, but when that came to an
end they were left without any regular teaching or Christian
influence.

While the Portuguese were in possession of the country
several families became Romanists. The Dutch occupation
resulted in many becoming members of the Dutch Reformed
Church, though they held it to be quite a right and proper
thing to observe pagan practices while their names were
enrolled as Christians. When the British administration was
established the licensed ' Proponent ' visited the neighbourhood
at long intervals to administer the sacraments and to register
marriages. Andrew Armour took a great interest in this place,
and frequently preached there, but, speaking generally, there
was no regular oversight of the Church, and in 1826 Bridgnell
considered it ' the least hopeful part ' of his Circuit. But in
1841 the Rev. Peter G. de Silva was appointed to Moratuwa,
and he gave himself up to systematic house-to-house visitation.
His pastoral work was done with such effect that the Circuit
soon became the strongest in the District.

If the response of the Church to such appeals had been more
generous there might have been at this time a great and rapid
extension of the Methodist Church among the Sinhalese, for
Buddhism was then thoroughly discredited in the opinion of
the people and the time of its ' revival ' was not yet come.
But the Society at home was at that time in debt to the amount
of fifty thousand pounds, and the political disturbances in
France had seriously disturbed the commerce of the world.
The Methodist Church was in the throes of the Reform agitation,
and in the years 1846-1851 the membership at home had been
reduced by forty-six thousand.1 Instead of accepting such
appeals Gogerly had rather to cut down expenditure, and a
considerable reduction in the number of schools took place.
We can scarcely wonder at this, deplorable though the fact
was to men who felt the greatness of the opportunity on the field.

The struggle between Buddhist priests and Christian teachers
was continuous, and increased in intensity until it culminated
in a challenge from the latter to destroy them by incantations
or the use of any of the supernatural powers which the former
declared to be under their control. When they failed the
priests became in some centres the object of derision ; but the

1 See Vol. I., p. 190.

78 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

Christian faith wins its greater victories in other ways, which,
if less spectacular, are more assured. In 1841 the Rev. Andrew
Kessen, LL.D., began his long, arduous, and honourable
ministry. The son of a Minister of the Established Church of
Scotland, he had graduated in the University of Glasgow. He
was distinguished as a scholar in both language and mathe
matics ; but he had; what does not always go with either, a
gift of teaching which quickly brought him into notice as an
educationist, so that he was for a time put in charge of the
Government College in Colombo, and could have entered into
permanent Government employ if he had been so minded. He
added to his scholastic work the labour of a pastor, and describes
his daily avocations as those of ' a student in the morning, a
schoolmaster in the forenoon, a pastor moving from hut to
hut in the afternoon, a preacher in the evening, and a tutor at
night.' Truly he was ' in labours more abundant.' He returned
from Ceylon in 1856, and for an account of his later ministry
the reader is referred to Volume II. of this History, pp. 396 ff.
Dr. Kessen did much for the educational side of Mission work
in Ceylon, but the Committee at home was disappointed that
the schools did not seem, from an evangelistic point of view,
to be so fruitful as they had hoped. Few out of the many
thousands who had passed through the schools were returned
as members of the Church, and anxiety was expressed as to
whether the others had not drifted into a condition of
scepticism and infidelity. A full and explicit expression of
the views of the Missionaries on the value of educational
work was requested. Thus early did the question which
threatened to become even divisive in the 'nineties trouble the
minds of the supporters of Mission work in England. As
might have been expected, opinion on the field was far from
agreed, and in the absence of anything like a consensus of
opinion the Committee wisely refrained from taking any
decisive action in the matter. The year 1841 saw the beginning
of what has proved to be a great factor in the life of the people
of Ceylon — the education of women. In that year ' A Superior
School for Girls ' was formed in Galle by the ' Ladies' Society
for Female Education in the East,'1 and Miss Douglas was sent
out to take charge of this, while Miss Twiddy was appointed
to a similar school in Jaffna. It was stated that though these

1 See Vol. IV., p. 20.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 79

schools were not directly missionary in character, they were
under the patronage of Missionaries, and it was hoped that
they would not fail to prove advantageous to the interests of
Christianity. In 1843 several schools were taken over by a
Government School Commission, Missionaries being still
regarded as superintending them. This arrangement brought
some relief to the finances of the District, but it did not con
tinue long. It was through such tentative movements that
our Missionaries came at last to the established system of
educational work, which they have developed to the great
advantage of the Church.

In 1847 there arrived in Colombo a Missionary whose course
was quickly run. The Rev. W. H. A. Dickson was gifted with
all that a Missionary requires, and he was as able as he was
amiable. But from the day of his arrival in Ceylon it was seen
that, humanly speaking, his life would be short. After two
years his health completely broke down, and he was transferred
to the Madras District in the hope that the change might prove
beneficial. But it was not so, and he died in 1851. By that
time Dr. Kessen had returned from furlough and Joseph
Rippon was added to a sadly attenuated staff. The latter
was appointed to Galle. At that time, though this station
was the first to be occupied by Methodists, there were only a
hundred fully accredited members in the Church. This
represented fruit that had been hardly won in the great citadel
of Buddhism, and the increase in membership continued to
be slow. But it was given to Rippon to add to the agencies
of a struggling Church that which quickly made it a centre of
efficient life for the whole District. In 1851 the Richmond
Hill property, two miles distant from the port of Galle, was
secured for Mission purposes, and presently a variety of build
ings, all devoted to the work of training, began to appear.
Rippon had asked for a Missionary to be sent out who would
take up the supervision of this work, but the only reply forth
coming was the sad and all too frequent message, ' The funds
of the Society did not warrant the making such an appoint
ment.' Yet in the same letter the Secretaries had urged the
development of the Ceylonese Ministry as the one means of
securing the advance of the Church. Gradually, however, the
necessary arrangements were made. The Theological Institu
tion and the Normal School were built in 1864, together with

80 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT-SOUTH CEYLON

a practising school as an adjunct to the latter. In 1876 a High
School for boys was built, and this was followed by an Anglo-
vernacular school for girls, erected in 1879. Hostels for
students, bungalows for resident Missionaries, and a church
with accommodation for three hundred and fifty, go to fill the
remainder of the site, and Richmond Hill became ' a saving
influence to the whole District and beyond.'

In 1860 Ceylon was visited by the Rev. Dr. Jobson, who was
passing on his way to Australia, and the summary record of
his impressions may well stand for a general description of the
Church at the close of the first half of the century.

I have been gratefully surprised by what I have seen and learned of
Methodism here. It is far more extensively spread by its stations,
chapels, and schools than I had looked for. . . . Our English brethren
here are devoted servants of Christ and of Methodism. The Native
Missionaries and Assistants are converted, spiritual, and hard-working
men, and they are successfully doing the work of evangelists. The
people are devout and happy Christians, and are contributing, as far
as they can out of their slender means, to aid and support the work of
God. The chapels are mostly neat and good ; the schools in many
instances are efficient ; but in the case of the day schools there are
exceptions. And in the general it may be safely stated that genuine
earnest Wesleyan Methodism is here established, and carrying on its
various operations. I have made careful investigations on conversion,
and on growth in grace, both among the Native Preachers and native
members, and I am satisfied that in these respects the evidences are as
good as can be found at home.

The next decade, that of the 'sixties, was notable for events
which had much to do with the subsequent development of
the Church in South Ceylon. The Rev. D. J. Gogerly died
at his post on September 6, 1862, and his long and able adminis
tration was followed by that of the Rev. R. Spence Hardy.
We have already noticed the position held by the former. It
is said that when it was known that he was in extremis Buddhist
priests had servants posted outside the Mission house to bring
to them the first news of the passing of the antagonist whom
they feared. Whether that report be true or not, there is no
question that they had found in him one who was thoroughly
acquainted with the faith which they professed to teach, and
one who could expose its failure in offering a remedy for the
social and moral failure of the world or any healing of the sin-
sick soul. The description given by the Rev. John Walton

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT-^SOUTH CEYLON 81

of Daniel John Gogerly deserves a place in our record, for it is
doubtful whether the Methodist Church ever had a greater
Missionary in Ceylon :

With the head of a German, the heart of an Englishman, and the
faith of a Methodist, he was a great man every way. In mental stature
he stood head and shoulders above his brethren. In scholarship in his
own line he has left no peer. In administrative capacity he could have
governed a kingdom. As a Preacher he was as convincing as Apollos
and sinewy as Paul. The best of the man was his kind and large heart.
He was the William Carey of Ceylon, giving to the Sinhalese successive
versions of the word of God. He was more. He studied the structure
of Buddhism until he mastered it, and then he marshalled his forces
and delivered an attack that shook the citadel.

Gogerly deserved all that was said of him. It is not likely that
many will ever stand where he stood among the Buddhists of
Ceylon. And yet his successor, Robert Spence Hardy, did
even more for the Church in Ceylon. That Church suffered
from the weakness incidental to any Church whose members
are Christians only in profession while at heart they are pagan.
That such persons should have identified themselves in any
way with the Church in Ceylon was part of the inheritance
passed on by Portuguese Priest or Dutch Minister to those
who followed them as religious teachers. Missionaries had
found it most difficult to detect, and even more so to suppress,
the admixture of heathenism and Christianity which was
common in Ceylon ; but the publications of Gogerly, sharply
defining the tenets of Buddhism, and guaranteeing them by
quotations from authoritative documents, had roused the
Buddhist priests to an opposition which from this time was
to continue and increase. The faint-hearted may have
deplored this opposition, but it made it easier to differentiate
between those who were Christians only in name and those
who were in true fellowship with the Church of Christ. The
returns of membership in 1865 showed that the Church was
less by one-third than that which was reported in the last year
of Gogerly 's administration. The sequel was most marked.
The story of Gideon's army was repeated in the experience of
the Church, and the victory which followed on the elimination
of the timid and insincere was complete. A gracious revival
of religion took place in Colombo in 1865, and it continued
to bless the Church for several years. Writing in 1869, the
6

82 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

Rev. John Scott describes its continuance in Moratuwa and
Panadure, where in five months five hundred and fifty con
versions were recorded. Presently converts from these places
removed to Kandy, whence they sent a petition for pastoral
provision and care in that town. Such a plea could not be
refused, and in 1866 the Rev. G. Baugh, returning to Ceylon
for a second term of service, was appointed to that station.
Fifty years before that the tender heart of Robert Newstead
had yearned over Kandy, but he had never reached it. In
1834 a half-hearted attempt was made to begin work there,
and a Missionary had been sent to make a start, but within
three years the Missionary was removed and the attempt
abandoned.

But now the effort made was the outcome of the spiritual life
of the Church itself ; it was the product, not of the enthusiasm
of an individual Missionary, nor of the deliberations of a
Synod, but of the impact of the Spirit of God upon a responsive
Church. It was a development of life rather than of organiza
tion. In the revival of 1865 Mr. J. H. Eaton, a distinguished
Burgher of Colombo, gave his heart to God in the true sense of
that phrase, and on his removal to Kandy pressed for the
reopening of the Mission abandoned in 1837. Another layman,
Mr. B. Anthony Mendis, who afterwards entered the Ministry,
also removed to Kandy about this time, and these two nobly sup
ported Mr. Baugh. In 1869 the London Committee voted
the sum of a thousand pounds towards the erection of the
necessary buildings, and this, together with what was raised
locally, gave the Mission an excellent start. In 1876 Mr.
Eaton, speaking at the anniversary meeting of the Society in
London, was able to report that the Church in Kandy had been
able, not only to support the Ceylonese Minister, but also to
provide a hundred and fifty pounds towards the support of
his European colleague, as well as build a chapel and a Mission
house. In later years we shall find a still more striking develop
ment of the Church in Kandy.

This revival of spiritual life, with its natural sequel in the
extension of the Church, must have rejoiced the heart of Mr.
Hardy, to whom had fallen the unhappy task of removing
from membership those who had proved themselves unworthy
of that privilege. Hardy had arrived in Ceylon, together
with Clough, when the latter returned from furlough in 1825.

.THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 83

He takes rank next after Gogerly as a scholar, and his works
on Buddhism earned for him the distinction of membership
in the Royal Asiatic Society. Called to the Chair of the Dis
trict, he served as Chairman for three years, returning to
England in 1865. Three years after he passed to his reward.
' An altogether gracious personality/ is the terse, comprehen
sive, and honourable characterization of one of the great
Missionaries of Ceylon. He was followed as Chairman by his
son-in-law, the Rev. John Scott. The additions to the staff
during the 'sixties were not numerous. The Revs. G. Baugh
and J. Nicholson arrived in 1861, and the former of these
returned to England in 1869. Of even shorter duration was
the service of the Rev. T. Roberts, who came out in 1865 and
returned to England in broken health three years after. His
place was taken by the Rev. J. Shipstone, and the vacancy
caused by Nicholson's retirement was filled by the Rev. R.
Tebb. In 1880 Nicholson was able to return to the field, and
we shall meet him again.

The 'seventies form a period of extraordinary increase in the
Methodist Church of South Ceylon. The great revival of
1865 was not a paroxysm of emotion subsiding as suddenly
as it had arisen. Its influence was felt for many years in the
several Churches of the District, and it is indicated in the
numerical returns from these. The number of those in full
Church fellowship rose from one thousand five hundred in 1870
to two thousand one hundred in 1880, while several hundreds
were each year returned as on probation. Even more remark
able was the increase of the pupils in the schools. These
numbered six thousand four hundred and forty-four at the
close of the decade, against two thousand seven hundred and
forty-two at its commencement. The number of Ceylonese
Ministers increased by twelve, Catechists by ten, and— most
significant of all— the Local Preachers in the District had
increased in number by sixty-three. The Church was feeling
the thrill of abundant life.

A Mission to the Tamil-speaking people in Colombo was
begun in 1873, when a Ceylon Minister from the Jaffna District
was appointed to labour in the city. The following year the
Rev. J. Ottley Rhodes came from the same District to take
charge of the work, and under his direction it rapidly developed,
Other Missionaries of this decade were the Revs. S. Langdoni

84 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

S. R. Wilkins, A. Shipham, and S. Hill. These, with Baugh
and Nicholson, who both returned, made the staff one of great
strength and efficiency.

In 1871 the Rev. John Kilner, at that time Chairman of the
Jaffna District, visited Kandy and Colombo, and his impressions
are valuable to those who would obtain a comprehensive view
of the Sinhalese District at this time. They are all the more
valuable because Kilner was himself a missionary statesman
of high standing. His visit was with a view to the establishing
of the Tamil Mission in Colombo, but he took occasion to visit
as many of the Sinhalese Circuits as he could reach. He calls
attention to

1. The real hold which Christianity has taken on the
sympathy of many large sections of the Sinhalese.

2. The vital character of the work. The people look upon
the cause as their own.

3. The reality and strength of the Native Ministry.

4. The capacity for expansion and growth.

5. The pressing need of a first-class educational establish
ment.

6. The opportunity for Tamil work.

Now these are all features of life and strength, and if the last
two touch upon a need rather than an accomplished fact, that
need was met within a very few years after his visit. Wesley
College, Colombo, began its illustrious career first as a high
school in 1874, the Rev. S. R. Wilkin being its first Principal,
and Richmond College, in Galle, followed in 1876, with the Rev.
S. Langdon at its head. Both of these institutions attained
positions of first-rate importance, not only in the Church, but
also in the general life of the community. Their individual
histories will come before us shortly. The Tamil Mission in
South Ceylon is far too important a development to be dis
missed in a sentence. Of all the races of South India the Tamil
has always shown the greatest readiness to migrate. We have
seen the extent to which this tendency showed itself in North
Ceylon, where it finally ousted the aboriginal tribes and
established itself in that District. They are also to be
found in large numbers in South Africa. Wherever there
seemed to be an opening for trade or industry within reach,
there was the Tamil to be found. The tea plantations at
Hatton, and on the hills around Kandy, drew an ever-increasing

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 85

number from the northern parts of the island and from South
India. When Colombo began to be known as the port of call
for ocean-going steamers, and in consequence an emporium of
trade, Tamil immigrants at once set up their establishments of
great or small dimensions, the Jaffna Tamils as a rule occupy
ing the better position of foremen or overseers, while others
from India accepted the humbler position of labourers. Dur
ing the Chairmanship of Mr. Fox some discussion took place
as to the desirability of beginning work among them, but the
time for that extension had not then come. Gogerly secured
the appointment of a European Missionary for this work, but
the latter proved to be unsuitable, and returned to England
almost immediately. When the census of 1871 was taken it
became known that there were not less than a hundred thous
and Tamil-speaking people in the Mission Stations occupied
by our Missionaries. Some of these were Christians from our
own Church in Jaffna ; others had come from L.M.S. stations
in Travancore and from C.M.S. stations in Tinnevelly. All
these needed pastoral care if they were to be saved from
relapsing into heathenism. As a result of Kilner's visit the
Rev. J. W. Phillips, one of the many noteworthy Tamil
Ministers of the Jaffna District, was sent to Colombo to begin
the work, and in 1874 the Rev. J. O. Rhodes was appointed
to take charge of the Mission. Its head quarters were fixed
in Jampettah, Colombo, with out-stations at Negombo and
Kalutara. The enterprise was immediately successful, and
it was found necessary to hold services at five other centres
in Colombo alone. For purposes of administration it was
decided that Tamil Ministers in South Ceylon should be
members of the local Synod and come under its control.
Schools were opened, and at first two of these were for girls,
but one of them was soon closed for want of funds. The value
of boarding schools for girls was by this time so fully acknow
ledged that one of these institutions was eagerly sought. In
1875 there were fifty-four members of the Tamil Church in
Colombo alone ; in 1913 there were two hundred and sixty-eight
— a number greater than that of the Sinhalese Church in that city.
A few miles south of Colombo we come to the Wellawatte
Circuit, where work had been going on for a number of years.
The result had not been commensurate with the efforts made ;
in 1887 there were only forty or fifty members in the Church.

86 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

But in that year the Rev. W. J. G. Bestall was appointed to
the Tamil Mission in South Ceylon, and on his initiation an
industrial school was begun at this centre. In 1890 an orphan
age was added. The enterprise was taken up in order to
provide a home and a better prospect in life for destitute boys,
and it was proposed to educate them in the school, and to find
occupation for them in the large mills adjoining. In these
the boys might earn wages which would go towards meeting
the expense of training them. The scheme was unsatisfactory
owing to the fact that the continuance of the mills was
uncertain, and as there were no others in Ceylon the boys were
being trained for an industry which was limited in scope and
exposed to the fluctuations of trade. In 1899 the mills actually
went into liquidation, but the situation in regard to the
industrial school was saved, and a far wider interest imparted
to it, by the removal of the industrial home from the Happy
Valley1 to this centre. This wise move has put an entirely
different aspect on the work at Wellawatte. More varied
industries, together with appropriate plant, came from the
home in the Uva Mission, and Wellawatte became a hive of
industry which has meant to many a friendless lad not only
the means of honourable livelihood, but also the beginning of
a Christian life. Here the Revs. J. S. Corlett, H. J. Philpott,
and others have wrought effectually for the furtherance of the
Gospel, and their work may be to some extent measured by
the fact that while the reputation of the School has always
stood very high for the quality of the goods produced, the
Rev. R. Tebb, writing in 1902, reported that during the six or
seven years preceding more than a hundred boys had been
received by baptism into the Christian Church. In that year
there were a hundred and forty boys in the school.

It is interesting to note that Mr. W. Caxton Mee, one of the
sons of the late much-beloved Josiah Mee, was for several years
the manager of the school, and where a layman of the necessary
qualifications in technique, and with a true evangelistic spirit
in his heart, can be secured, it is a wise policy to put such
schools under his management. In 1906 the Mission press,
which figured so largely in the financial troubles of the earliest
years, was removed from Kollupitiya and made another depart
ment of the Wellawatte school. The number of boys in the

ISee p. 95.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 87

school continued to increase, and in 1913 there were two
hundred and twenty boys being trained ; of these a hundred
and seventy were boarders. By that time the trained boys
were in demand all over the island, and good appointments
were easily secured for them. Mr. J. A. Frewin, himself an
old boy of the school, was in charge, under missionary super
intendence, and the institution took rank as the largest and
most efficient school of the kind in Ceylon. Here, again, we
come upon a factor in the making of a Church which, begun
in compassion for the destitute and friendless, becomes at
length a fruitful source of strength to the Church and an
evangelizing agency of the highest value. In 1913 the Wella-
watte press undertook the printing of the whole Sinhalese
Bible for the Baptist Missionary Society. It could scarcely
have found a more fitting contribution to make on the centenary
of that great year which brought Harvard and his modest
press to Ceylon. The Wellawatte Circuit became a self-
supporting and self-governing Circuit, and now embraces all
Sinhalese work in the south of Colombo.

The outstanding event of the 'eighties was the separation
of the Galle and Kandy Sections into self-administrative Dis
tricts. This took place in 1885. Galle was put under the
episcopal care of the Rev. J. Nicholson, and Kandy under
that of the Rev. S. Langdon. The rapid growth of the Church
pointed to some such division, and the experiment was tried
for twenty years. It was not, however, considered well to
continue it, for reasons which will appear, and in 1905 the
three Districts came again under a single administration.
During the twenty years each section had grown. Though
the membership in the Galle section was small when compared
with that of the other two, the proportional increase was quite
as marked. A table of comparative statistics will illustrate
the growth of the Church :

1885 1905

European Missionaries 10 16

Ceylonese Ministers . . . . 32 30

Catechists . . . . . . 29 39

Local Preachers. . .. .. 94 164

Members . . . . . . 2,417 3,613

Members on Probation .. .. 595 1,045

Children in Day Schools . . 7,561 16,795

88 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

The increase in membership is striking, but two other items
seem even more significant. The number of Local Preachers
had increased from ninety-four to a hundred and sixty-four,
and the number of children in the schools had risen from seven
thousand five hundred and sixty-one to sixteen thousand seven
hundred and ninety-five. Of these two singled out for com
ment the former indicates the inner life of the Church. For
where this is healthy and strong, the service which asks no other
wages than to ' share the travail which makes God's kingdom
come ' is certain to appear. Concern for the souls of those
who are out of the way is an index of the presence in the Church
of the Spirit of Him who came to seek and to save them that
are lost.

The educational expansion, on the other hand, indicates
the hold which the Methodist Church of this District had
obtained upon the communal life to which it belonged. There
is no need to disparage such work or compare the number of
children in the schools with the number of conversions in a
single year. To those who look beyond the present and see
the Church of the future there is in this great crowd of school
children in Ceylon the promise, not only of a large Church,
when the seed sown is touched into life by the Spirit of God,
but also that of an instructed Church, with its trained and
disciplined youth ready to enter the ranks of an indigenous
Ministry when it shall please God to call them. This is by
no means all that can be said of this striking feature of the
Methodist Church in Ceylon. Many of those who by Christian
character and consecrated life added grace and strength to
the Church were first led to seek and to find their Saviour
while still attending school. But though never a convert had
gladdened the heart of some faithful teacher, it is an essential
element in every Christian Church that it should be the very
opposite of obscurantist, that its place is always in the foremost
files of those who stand for light and the development of the
human mind.

The loss of two loved and experienced Missionaries was a
sad blow to the District during this decade. The Rev. Edward
Strutt had come from Trincomalee, in the Northern District,
to take charge of the Tamil Mission when the Rev. J. O. Rhodes
laid down the burden of his service. But he was able to remain
at work for only four years. In 1885 his health — never very

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 89

robust — broke down, and he retired to England, where he soon
won the love of those to whom he ministered. The Rev.
Samuel Hill had been engaged largely in educational work,
both at Galle and in Wesley College, Colombo. In 1895 the
call came to him to join those who offer the more perfect service
of heaven. He was succeeded at Wesley College by the Rev.
Thomas Moscrop, and the Rev. W. J. G. Bestall was trans
ferred from the Jaffna District to take charge of the Tamil
Mission in the south. In the earlier half of the decade, before
the separation of the Galle and Kandy Districts, the only
European addition to the staff was the Rev. W. H. Rigby.
But that addition was a notable one, for Mr. Rigby was
appointed Chairman of the Kandy District in 1896, and when
the reunion of Districts took place in 1905 he became the
Chairman of the whole reunited District. His name will be
frequently before us in the pages which follow.

When the division into three Districts took place the Colombo
District retained four of the ten European Missionaries on the
field, but of these, as we have seen, Strutt returned to England
in 1895, and the same year records the death of Hill. Moscrop
was then put in charge of Wesley College, so that the whole
of the Sinhalese work devolved upon the Chairman, John
Scott. It was well for the work that he had with him so
excellent a staff of Ceylonese Ministers. In 1887 the Rev.
Arthur Triggs arrived to help him, but some time would
necessarily pass before the latter would become efficient in the
use of Sinhalese. The following year the Rev. Walter Charles-
worth came to take charge of the Tamil work, Mr. Bestall being
then stationed in Kandy, but as he, too, would be at first unable
to speak in Tamil, the strain was but little relieved. In 1889
Bestall returned to Colombo, Triggs being appointed Principal
of the Richmond College at Galle ; but Moscrop was by that
time in Kandy, his place at Wesley College being filled by the
Rev. T. C. Hillard, so that at the close of the decade the only
European Missionaries in the District of more than two years'
standing were the Chairman and Bestall, the latter being in
Tamil work. But in spite of this shortage in European Mis
sionaries the work in the District continued to be fruitful.
The membership increased, and the Church more than held
its ground. In 1889 John Scott returned to England. He
had served in South Ceylon since 1855, and had done much to

9o THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

bring the work to the pitch of excellence which it had reached
at the time of his withdrawal. His work for the Church was
not yet ended. He served for short periods both in Bombay
and Calais. His great memorial is to be found in the Methodist
Church of South Ceylon, where his name is still held in rever
ence as that of one who never failed the Church in wisdom,
faithfulness, and courtesy.

The history of the three Districts is not easy to reduce to
three distinct lines in the matter of administration, by reason
of the interchange of Missionaries which took place. Nicholson
left Galle for Colombo, and for a few years Langdon was Chair
man of both Kandy and Colombo. Moscrop went from
Colombo to Kandy, and Triggs was sent to Galle. Rigby was
at one time supervising the Tamil Mission ; at another time
we find him at Matara, in the Galle District, whence he returned
to Kandy as Chairman. But whatever changes the exigencies
of stationing the Ministers might cause, the work of the Church
continued to prosper.

In 1889 Tebb returned to Ceylon, and was appointed
Chairman of the Galle District, in which office he continued
until 1900, when he took charge of the Colombo District.
This he administered until 1907, when he returned to England
after thirty-seven years of service, thirty of which were spent
in Ceylon. He often had, as Chairman, to face difficulties
of one kind and of another ; but his fidelity to duty, and his
loyalty to his brethren, won for him universal respect. He
went to his reward in 1920. He was followed in the chair
manship of the Galle District by the Rev. Arthur Triggs, and
in 1903 by the Rev. E. A. Prince. In 1896 there came to
Galle one of the ablest and most devoted Missionaries ever
sent to Ceylon. The Rev. J. H. Darrell had taken a high
place among the scholars of his year at Cambridge, and he
added to that attainment personal gifts of charm, of industry,
and of sound judgement which marked him out lor pre
eminence even among the many great Missionaries who have
served in Ceylon. He was appointed to Richmond College,
and there his faculty of teaching came into splendid operation.
He also added much to the efficiency of the College by improv
ing its buildings. In 1901 a department for the training of
workers was added. He enjoyed excellent health, and a long
life of splendid service seemed to await him, but in 1905 an

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 91

epidemic of influenza and enteric fever swept over the island,
and he fell a victim to the disease. His name is perpetuated
by the Darrell Hostel, built as his memorial, but those who
knew him needed no reminder of one who had won their
respect, their reverence, and their love. He was followed in
Richmond College by the Rev. W. J. T. Small, who was
happily still in charge of the College when this chapter was
written.1

The presence of Missionaries in Galle was a direct challenge
to Buddhism, so strongly established in that town and neigh
bourhood. There were thirteen thousand more Buddhists
here than in Colombo, and eight thousand more than the
whole Hindu population of Jaffna. In such a stronghold
the progress of Christianity was slow. That hoary citadel
was not to be taken by storm ; it was a case of sapping and
mining. While some of those who professed the Christian
faith found that they could maintain the position of the
'Government Christian' — that is, of one who, while profess
edly a Christian, remained at heart and in secret observance a
Buddhist — there was some show of interest in the new teaching ;
but when the great cleansing of the Church took place during
the administration of Hardy, the resistance of the priests
became more open and confessed. Visits of ' inquirers ' to
the Missionaries almost entirely ceased. A state of war was
declared, and the most bitter antagonism was shown by those
who could no longer receive the salary of a teacher in the
Mission school while they bowed before the image of Buddha
in the temple. Partly because they were thus forced into the
open, and partly because Theosophical writers in the West were
dallying with Buddhism in their glorification of all that was
Eastern and ' occult,' there took place what was commonly
called ' a revival of Buddhism.' Where this was accompanied
with some attempt at moral reform — such as abstinence from
the use of intoxicating liquor — it might have been even
welcomed, and in any case hostility is better than indifference.
The antagonism culminated in an open contest held at Panadure
in 1873, when a Ceylon Minister, the Rev. David de Silva,
confronted one of the most famous of the Buddhist priests
in the island, while thousands of persons assembled to witness

1 Mr. Small has since left Richmond College for the Peradeniya Training Colony,
his place being taken by the Rev. A. A. Sneath.

92 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

the contest between the two protagonists of the conflicting
faiths. The subject for discussion was not, however, well
denned. The Christian dealt with Buddhist metaphysics,
while the Buddhist concerned himself with examples of
immorality taken from Old Testament records. No definite
issue could result from a discussion carried on upon such
lines. It is needless to say that a Buddhist victory was
loudly proclaimed. In 1880 centres for the teaching of
Theosophy were established in all towns of any importance,
and schools were opened by the followers of that cult. All
this meant a yet more strenuous fight for the Christian Mis
sionary, and the forging of new weapons. The call now was
for education. Buddhists were opening schools in which
English was taught, and boys who had passed through our
elementary schools often continued their studies in those of
Buddhists. Unscrupulous methods were adopted for enticing
children to leave the Mission school ; and, as all Government
grants depended on the number attending school, a serious
loss of ' local income ' was the result. A high school for
boys and a similar school for girls were clearly indicated,
but with a falling grant how were these to be obtained ? Yet
in 1876 both of these were in existence. The Galle high
school for boys was opened, with Langdon for Principal, and
with a hundred boys in attendance. At the same time Miss
Eastwood arrived from England, the first lady Principal of
the school for girls. The estate on Richmond Hill afforded
excellent accommodation for both schools, and in 1881 the
former was raised to the status of a College. The property
acquired by Joseph Rippon was now blossoming into an
imposing missionary settlement.

It is to be questioned whether any of our Mission Stations
has a larger or more important educational settlement.

But we must now pass from Galle to the second District,
which had been separated from Colombo. We have already
described the coming of the Methodist Church to Kandy after
many years of disappointment. When the new District was
formed it was said that it covered more than half of the island
and nearly half of its population ; but it must be remembered
that the District as formed included such stations as Negombo
and Seeduwa, and was not conterminous with the ancient
kingdom of Kandy. In the chapel built by Baugh services

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 93

were held for the military and other English-speaking folk.
Tamil and Sinhalese were, of course, in constant use, and Mr.
Eaton rendered excellent service by conducting services in
Portuguese for those who spoke that language. Baugh was
followed by Tebb in 1872, and by Nicholson in 1878. Then
Samuel Langdon came to Kandy in 1880, and with this
appointment great developments began to appear.

Langdon had many of the great qualifications which go to
make the successful Missionary, and of these two were con
spicuous. He had a ready and genuine sympathy with young
people, and he was a great believer in the religious value of
work. He brought these two into a happy co-ordination by
setting up industrial schools wherever he found it possible to
do so. Industry and education were the two great planks in
his missionary platform. It was not very long before he had
a girls' high school and industrial schools for both boys and
girls in Kandy. Later on he established a boys' reformatory
and a hospital in the Uva extension of his District, and many
vernacular day schools in both sections of his District. In
1893 there were nearly three thousand five hundred scholars
in the different schools of this District, and conversions among
the young people were of frequent occurrence. In the Kandy
District, as in other parts of Ceylon, the schools proved to be
the most fruitful part of the ' Mission Garden.' In 1882
Langdon was in England for furlough, but he returned in
1884, bringing with him the Rev. W. H. Rigby, and in the
following year these two proceeded to reclaim the wilderness
of Uva.

The Uva District — made into a distinct province of Ceylon
in 1885 — had been a much neglected part of the island, and
missionary operations among its many villages were almost
unknown when Langdon determined to claim it for Christ.

To Rigby there fell the honour of being the first European
Missionary in the Uva Province. He began work at Banda-
warella, and extensive tours were made in the surrounding
villages ; but presently it was found that Haputala was a
better station for the head quarters of the Mission, though
many pleas were put forward on behalf of Badulla, where as
early as 1821 an effort had been made to secure a Missionary.
It was not until seventy years after, in 1892, that the Rev.
E. A. Prince was sent to this station. By that time a girls'

94 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

industrial school had been opened in Badulla. So successful
were these schools that the thanks of the Government were
sent to Langdon for his work in this direction. Mention of
Badulla cannot be made without some reference, slight though
it must be, to the work done in the girls' home by Miss Cooke,
and a little later by Miss Tyler. Both of these ladies were
sent out by the Women's Auxiliary, the former in 1888 and
the latter in 1893. Two years after Miss Teasey joined them,
and these three ladies have given on behalf of the girls in the
Uva district an altogether beautiful service, the harvest
of which will be gathered for years to come. Twelve years
after Miss Teasey was obliged to withdraw on account of a
breakdown in health.

The membership in the Kandy District showed every year
an increase. In 1888 it stood at seven hundred and fourteen,
with a hundred and sixty on probation for membership. In
1895 the numbers were eight hundred and forty-eight and two
hundred and fifty-eight respectively, while there were in
addition three hundred and fifty-four members in the Junior
Society-classes. When in 1905 the three Districts were again
united, the number of full members in the Kandy section had
risen to more than eleven hundred, with four hundred and
thirty on probation. Langdon 's ' Garden ' was full of flower
and fruit. The station which returned the largest number of
members was Kurana, a town situated between Negombo
and Colombo. Here was to be seen the Methodist Church
organisation in full working order. In addition to the Ministry,
both ordained and unordained, and day and Sunday schools,
there were such familiar institutions as Quarterly Meetings
and Leaders' Meetings (there were sixteen Classes in the
Circuit), a Tract Society, and a ' Christian Workers' Associa
tion.' Most of the people in Kurana were adherents of the
Methodist Church. Another flourishing centre of work was
Seeduwa, between Kurana and Colombo. In the earliest days
these places had seemed to be all but irreclaimable. But if
the sowing was done in tears, there was afterwards a harvest
over which both sower and reaper could rejoice together.

Another Circuit in this District in which the harvest, long
delayed, promises to be abundant is Negombo. The last
Missionary to reside in Negombo was the Rev. R. Spence
Hardy, and nearly forty years passed before another was

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 95

stationed there. That Missionary was the Rev. E. S. Burnett
(1880-1885). When he took up his appointment there were
forty-one members in the Church, with fourteen on probation.
In the centenary year the numbers were seventy-five and
twenty-four, but there were in addition nearly six hundred
baptized ' adherents.' A breath of the reviving Spirit might
at any time bring these into more vital communion with the
Church. Negombo has been from the time of the Portuguese
occupation a stronghold of Romanism, and while its devotees
have been scarcely less benighted than their heathen neigh
bours, this has meant a large measure of opposition, which
has been the more effective inasmuch as Romanism offered
a position of compromise between Protestant Christianity
and the indigenous idolatry.

But Negombo has a certain significance for the future
which must not be overlooked. It has become the base of
operations in the north-west province, as we have already
indicated, and while Colombo will remain the nexus between
the Tamil and the Sinhalese Churches, a secondary point of
contact will be found in Negombo, where the two races are
to be seen side by side. If the hopeful movement towards
the north-west develops we shall hear much more about
Negombo. It also forms the starting-point of a second line
of advance into the more central province of Kandy.
Kurunegala, over which the tender heart of Robert Newstead
yearned, and which seemed at one time so hopeless a centre
of work that it was abandoned, is now a Circuit linking
Negombo with Kandy. When modern laws of hygiene have
been so applied as to mitigate the severity of the malaria
prevalent in this region, Negombo may become, if it is not so
already, a strategic centre from which the lines run north
and south and east. Burnett, Rigby, Sandford, and Corlett
have all in turn been stationed here. Their work remains.
Its issue cannot be doubted.

In 1900 Haputala, where Langdon had opened one of his
industrial schools, became known as a centre of military
activity owing to its having been selected by the Government
as a suitable site for a large camp in which at one time more
than five thousand Boers were interned. Services were held
by our Missionaries both on behalf of the prisoners, some of
whom were members of our Church in the Transvaal, and also

96 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

for the soldiers who guarded them. This choice of Haputala
by the Government had an important issue affecting our
work. For later on the Government took over our industrial
school, and established a permanent camp in the ' Happy
Valley.' The inmates of the school were removed, as we have
already stated, to Wellawatte.

The three Districts of South Ceylon were brought under a
single administration again in 1905. The twenty years of
separate administration had shown that each of the three
was still short of that point at which autonomy becomes a
factor making for efficiency. Nor was the autonomy realized
during the period of separation complete. Exigencies of
' Stationing ' entailed a continual transfer of Missionaries
from one District to another, and this led to an embarrassed
administration, while co-ordination of work was difficult.
The small Synod is never desirable, and no one of the three
was likely to be other than small for some time to come. The
reuniting of the sections was amply justified by results ensuing,
and it brought great relief to both European and Ceylonese
Ministers. In our record of the twelve years preceding the
centenary year we shall regard them as a single District,
though in doing this we are anticipating events by five years,
for the prominent features of the work in one appear also in
the other two, and we shall avoid some amount of repetition
if we consider them as forming a unity during the whole period.
That period reveals a quiet but remarkable growth of the
Church. No period of the same duration in the history of
the Methodist Church in Ceylon shows an equal development.
The Christian community attached to the Methodist Church
in both North and South Ceylon stood at a little more than
five thousand five hundred in 1900. In the thirteen years
that followed it increased by nearly three thousand, and was
twice as great as it had been so recently as the year 1885.

Before we pass to consider this development in detail
something should be said as to the reaction of Buddhism to
the effort of the Church. At the beginning of the period,
under the influence of theosophical propaganda, Buddhists
regarded Christianity with supercilious indifference. They
assumed an air of superiority. It was ' fashionable ' to be a
Buddhist. Was not the teaching of Buddha winning converts
by the thousand among the people of Europe and America ?

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 97

In the days of the ' Government Christians ' an individual
might gain distinction by becoming a Christian. Now his
doing so was considered to be a sentence of obscurity. What
had been gain was now counted loss. This was really nearer
to the standpoint of the Apostle Paul, and the Church was
none the poorer for this assumption. But it sufficed to give
Buddhism an extended lease of life, and its votaries were
correspondingly elated. The great wave of ' Nationalism '
which was flowing over India at this time had its influence
also in Ceylon, and Buddhists were quick to put themselves
into relation with it. It became ' patriotic ' to be a Buddhist.
They also saw — what many Christians are so slow to see — the
value of education from a religious point of view, and they
covered the whole of Ceylon with a network of schools, many
of which were most efficiently worked. The wisest of the
Buddhist teachers were far from accepting the offered alliance
with the Theosophists. They saw clearly enough that there
was distinct antagonism between the teaching of Buddha
and that of Mrs. Besant, but all were not equally wise, and
for the moment Buddhism seemed to be sailing on a rising
tide. But the significant fact arising from the clash of religions
in Ceylon at this time was that it was precisely during the
time when the ' revival of Buddhism ' was loudly proclaimed
that the largest increase of the Church took place, and from time
to time converts were found from among prominent teachers of
the Buddhist theory of life. For thoughtful men saw that those
who accepted that theory as a rule for their own conduct were
shutting their eyes to the ignorance, the suffering, and the
sin of the world, or, following the example of their great
teacher, they were running away from the insistent claim
which these things continually make upon men of vision and
sympathy. The Christian proclamation of redemption and
the hope of victory over the world through the surrender of
self to Christ was seen to be the secret of fuller life. So long
as these antinomies are kept clear and are fully presented,
the Christian Church will survive even greater opposition
than that of the Buddhists in the early years of the new
century.

Missionary education during this closing period of our
review offers a striking contrast to the uncertain efforts of
former years. It is true that at its commencement Missionaries

98 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT-SOUTH CEYLON

were seriously inconvenienced for want of adequate buildings,
but that inconvenience has now been lessened, though we
cannot speak of it as entirely removed. One of the greatest
of England's schoolmasters-— Thring of Uppingham— used to
insist upon the necessity of good buildings in education.

Whatever men may say or think, ' the almighty wall ' is the supreme
and final arbiter of schools. . . . Never rest until you have got the
almighty wall on your side and not against you. Never rest until you
have got all the fixed machinery for work the best possible. The waste
in a teacher's workshop is the lives of men.

Many a Missionary has found himself hampered in his work,
and robbed of the auxiliary influence he might have found,
by being compelled to work in buildings which could never
elevate the tone of his pupil's minds, and which were often
even insanitary. The problem arising from Mission buildings
has often seemed insoluble. The grants for this purpose made
by embarrassed Committees in England were, in comparison
with the need, quite insignificant, and in most fields (South
Ceylon was, as we shall see, a happy exception) little could
be obtained from local resources. Individual Missionaries
were left for the most part to supplement such slender provision
for their work as best they could.

Of the educational work of Dr. Kessen we have already
written. With the appointment of the Rev. S. R. Wilkin
in 1873 a ' Collegiate School ' was opened in Colombo, and was
most successful. Wilkin was followed in 1880 by the Rev.
Arthur Shipham, and by the Rev. S. Hill in 1884. Under the
direction of the last-named there seemed to be every prospect
of the College becoming a first-class institution, but the
untimely death of the Principal in 1885 dashed all such hopes
to the ground. Excellent work was done by his successors,
the Revs. T. Moscrop, T. C. Hillard, and J. Passmore. College
students began to win distinctions in the scholastic world.
In 1895 there were five hundred students on the College roll,
and of these about thirty were boarders. Now all this time
the buildings in which the College was housed were most
unsatisfactory. They were of the poorest and shabbiest type.
The boarding house especially was more like a broken-down
stable than a home for boys. Protest had followed appeal
for many years, but nothing was done, though the amount

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 99

spent annually upon repairs would have proved to be good
interest upon a considerable capital outlay. A debt of six
hundred pounds upon the buildings already in existence made
the outlook more than depressing. But in 1895 the Rev.
Henry Highfield took over the charge of the College. Like
those who had preceded him, he was scandalized by the state
of the buildings, and he determined that ' Wesley College '
should be housed in a manner more worthy of its name and
of its purpose.

The first thing to be taken in hand was the liquidation of
the debt, and this was accomplished. Then the scheme was
launched which projected a new College in a more suitable
position. A site was obtained, not without great difficulty
both in Ceylon and in England. But the case was one in
which delay would have meant an indefinite set-back to
missionary educational work for many years, and the Com
mittee in London showed its wisdom in not insisting too
rigorously upon the due observance of its perfectly reasonable
regulations. To have refused to accept the opportunity
which offered would have been deplorable ; for, apart alto
gether from the value of the College as an evangelistic centre
of great fruitfulness, the youth of the rapidly increasing
Christian community made this provision an urgent necessity.
In 1904 Highfield set himself to raise locally the amount which,
added to a building grant from England, would enable him
to remove the reproach which rested upon our educational
work in Colombo. His success in raising the sum of two
thousand five hundred pounds is an indication of the value
put upon the efforts of his predecessors by educated Ceylonese
in Colombo, and indeed throughout the island. Excellent
buildings were erected in Campbell Park, and the results,
both educational and evangelistic, have been quite beyond
tabulation. ' Old Boys ' from the College now occupy high
positions, both in the official, the professional, and the mer
cantile world ; and others, not less to be honoured, have
given themselves to the service of their countrymen in pro
claiming the Gospel which they were led to accept while
passing through the class-rooms of Wesley College. The new
buildings were opened in 1907.

Limitation from inadequate premises similar to that which
obtained in Colombo was felt in connexion with Kingswood

100

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

School at Kandy. This school was first begun as a matter of
private enterprise, but in 1894 it was taken over by the
Missionaries. The Rev. E. A. Prince did much for it in its
early days by adding a hall to the buildings, and later on a
set of dormitories. This latter addition allowed it to be used
as a boarding school, and its value from a missionary point of
view was thereby greatly increased. Unfortunately this very
desirable adjunct had to be abandoned, as the space occupied
by the dormitories was required for additional class-rooms.
Writing in 1910, the Rev. W. J. Noble speaks of the ' cramped
conditions ' under which this school was compelled to work.
The pity is that such work, the value of which, especially in
Ceylon, has been proved over and over again, should be
' cramped/ and the worst feature of such cases is that the
limitation to missionary efficiency is due entirely to financial
stringency. Restrictions due to weaknesses in the teaching
staff, or from the attitude and disposition of those attending
the school, are often the causes of failure. Their removal is
only to be secured by moral and spiritual changes which are
beyond human control. But where the hindrance is due to a
stinted provision of material means, the failure of the Church
to remove it can only be attributed to want of vision, or to
want of that spirit of sacrifice which would at once provide
the financial assistance required.

The Richmond College at Galle was happily free from the
extreme difficulty felt in the other centres of higher education.
The scheme followed in the setting up of this institution was
well conceived from the first, and in the centenary year it
was possible to report that the fee-income not only met all
the working expenses of the year, but left a credit balance
sufficient to meet the cost of erecting new class-rooms and a
small laboratory. The numbers returned from these three
Colleges in 1913 are remarkable. Wesley College had six
hundred and thirty-nine students on the rolls, Richmond
College had four hundred and thirty-three, and Kingswood
School had two hundred and forty-three.

Work among women and girls had been carried on in Ceylon
for many years by those devoted Missionaries to whom full
justice has not yet been done— the wives of Missionaries.
These worked under limitations familiar on all Mission fields,

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 101

and none rejoiced more than they did when the Women's
Auxiliary was formed, and their agents began to appear on
the field. They rejoiced, not because they would thus be
relieved of toil, for they still continued to serve, but because
the work they loved would be more efficiently done. Women
consecrated to the ministry of teaching had appeared both in
Jaffna and Galle in 1839, but in l86i the Women's Auxiliary
sent Miss Eacott to Jaffna, and eight years after Miss Scott
was sent to Colombo. In the 'seventies other ladies appeared
in Kandy and Badulla. These were the forerunners of a
great sisterhood, whose loving ministry has brought into the
life of women in Ceylon a blessing beyond all words which
may be used in describing it. If the Women's Auxiliary
had never sent their workers to any other field, they have
gathered in Ceylon a harvest which was worth all the labour
lavishly given by Mrs. Wiseman and her many coadjutors.
At first the number of women Missionaries who were able to
continue at work for more than five years was very small.
Sickness, death, and other causes cut short many a ministry
which had been freely and fully given. But as time went on
there was a marked increase in the length of time spent on
the field, and that has been an immeasurable gain, for in no
work is the cumulative effect of service more clearly seen than
in the work of women in schools and hospitals.

In South Ceylon by far the greater part of the work attempted
has been educational. Medical work has been taken up only
at Welimade, in the backward province of Uva. English
schools for girls are now to be found in Colombo, Galle, Kandy,
and Badulla. Many a girl has left those schools carrying in
her heart the secret of true womanhood in her devotion to
the Christ whom she met there, and these girls have taken a
gracious influence, where most it is needed in the East, into
the home-life which they alone may form. Industrial schools
for girls have also been set up in Kandy and Badulla, and when
the last-named was opened two of the most efficient helpers
were taken from the pupils of the previously established
school of this kind in Kandy. In these schools girls belonging
to the poorest classes are admitted, but whatever their destitu
tion may be when they enter, they usually leave enriched with
Christian graces, and equipped for high service in the kingdom
of Christ.

102 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

The agencies at work under the Women's Auxiliary do not
end here. In Galle and in Badulla Bible-women are being
trained to do their own beautiful and fruitful service in the
villages of Ceylon, and their work is prominent in Matara and
in the Colombo City Mission. Throughout the whole island,
too, the Women's Auxiliary help to support the work done in
vernacular schools wherever girls are to be found in them.
In no Mission field in the East is the Christian influence of
women in the home so powerful, and it passes from the home
into the whole life of the country.

A particularly happy feature of the 'seventies was the reaching
out of the Methodist Church, both Tamil and Sinhalese, to
the ' regions beyond.' No truer indication of life in a Christian
Church can be found than the determination of its members to
bring those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death into
the light of truth, and into the power of new life in Christ.
The region to which the two Churches now turned their
attention was the west coastal district between Negombo, the
most northern Circuit of the Sinhalese District, and Jaffna,
the head quarters of the Tamil District. On this coast the
most considerable town is Manaar, and it will be remembered
that this was one of the centres recommended by Sir Robert
Brownrigg, the Governor of Ceylon, for occupation by the
pioneer Missionaries of 1814. It was not, however, occupied
at that time, and the whole coast remained without a Missionary
until 1872, when a Tamil Minister was sent to Manaar. This
town was the central station of the Roman Catholic Mission,
and it was here that Francis Xavier came when he crossed
from India to Ceylon. Its population is both Tamil and
Sinhalese, and when the projected railway between India
and Ceylon comes into being Manaar will become a centre
of first-class strategic importance. The district has a bad
name on account of the prevalence of malarial fever, but the
real cause for its neglect was the shortage of Missionaries.
The most significant fact in the attempt to evangelize its
people is that the initiative came from the Ceylonese Church.
In 1903 a tour of the district was undertaken by the Rev. J.
Simon de Silva, in company with a Catechist and two laymen.
The spiritual destitution of the people greatly impressed them,
and not less did they feel the neediness of scattered families
of Christians who had come from other parts of the island.

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 103

In one or two villages, such as Kirimetiyana and Chilaw,
work was begun in schools, but it was felt that the opportunity
for more extensive operations was too great to be missed.
The Jaffna District was the first to send a European Mis
sionary into the area, and in 1908 the Rev. W. C. Bird was
appointed to Manaar. The movement from the south was
even more hopeful, inasmuch as it was wholly due to the
initiative of the native Churches. In 1906 an Extension
Fund raised by these amounted to more than a hundred and
thirteen pounds. A Committee was formed to administer
it, and to this Committee was entrusted the evangelization of
the north-west province. The Rev. C. Ganegoda was set
apart by the Synod to work under the direction of this Com
mittee. The following year a hundred and fifty- two pounds
was raised for the fund, and conversions in the new field began
to be reported. In 1908 fifty members were returned, with
forty more on probation. The membership continued to
increase every year, until in 1913 there were a hundred and
sixteen members, with seventy-five on probation, while there
were a hundred and nineteen others who had received baptism
but were returned as ' adherents.' At Manaar the Christian
community numbered a hundred and forty-eight, of whom
seventy-five were full members. This was a glorious harvest
to be reaped after only seven years.

But the evangelistic spirit of the Church appeared in other
directions. A wave of spiritual influence passed over the
Church in Galle during the year 1902. Aggressive work
among non-Christians was taken up, and many young people
who had passed through our schools were led to make an open
confession of Christ. Mission bands were formed to conduct
open-air services in Colombo, Kandy, and Matara, as well as
in Galle. The whole Church was quickened, and great was
the rejoicing of those who thus saw the fruit of long and
faithful service.

In 1913 it was decided to make a special evangelistic effort
in Colombo, and the Rev. A. E. Restarick, whose service in
the Jaffna District began in 1884, arrived from England to
direct it. With him were associated the Revs. H. Haigh
and G. A. F. Senaratna, who were to work on the Sinhalese
side while Restarick worked on the Tamil. The old chapel,
built by Harvard in the Pettah, was made into ' a Central

104 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

Hall ' and formed the head quarters of the enterprise, while
open-air work was vigorously prosecuted. The new century
of the Methodist Church was thus most appropriately linked
to that which began with the coming of Harvard and Clough
to Colombo. But whereas their appeal was made to those
who were steeped in the deadening teaching of a Buddhism
which had lost even the moral ideals which gave it its initial
vigour and success, their happier successors could present the
claims of Christ to men whose minds were permeated with the
teaching of Jesus, as they had been taught in Mission schools,
and who could test in the lives of their own countrymen the
power of Christ in saving the souls of men. For at the back
of this evangelistic effort there now stood what did not exist
in 1813 — a Methodist Church of Ceylon, native to the soil,
possessing characteristics peculiar to itself, yet revealing
features which certified its relationship to the evangelical
revival of the eighteenth century in England. In the decade
immediately preceding the centenary year that Church made
steady progress in the direction of self-support. Time and
experience had made it clear that so long as the Missionary
continued to receive local contributions towards the financing
of Church operations, making good each year whatever defi
ciency might remain, so long would the Church rely upon a
strength external to itself, and fail to realize the honourable
duty of providing all reasonable expenses from its own resources,
while self-reliance would be indefinitely postponed. But there
was another and more subtle reason for the spirit of depen
dence upon outside help. Missionaries were slow in trusting
the Churches with the power of governing themselves. It
is not easy to see the moment when parental control may
safely be removed, and individual freedom be given to the
child. But until some measure of self-direction be given it
is not likely that responsibility will be seen to be not only a
duty, but also honour and joy. As soon as the Missionaries
began to trust the Churches under their care there awoke in
these a pride in providing for the cost of their own Church
expenses. Then their concern for their heathen neighbours
was translated into a distinct missionary obligation, and the
Churches added to the cost of their own service a fund to be
used in evangelistic effort in regions not yet reached by the
light of the Gospel. Methodist organization lends itself

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 105

readily to the furtherance of this essential element in a Christian
Church, and when once the principle had been grasped progress
became rapid. With the exercise of strength the capacity
for self-government increased, until side by side with an already
efficient and indigenous prophetic ministry there appeared a
laity willingly accepting their share in the burden of Church
administration. So rapidly did the laity come forward, and
give proof of their worthiness to co-operate, that in the
Financial Synod of 1907 there were no fewer than twenty-
eight laymen associated with the Ministers of the Church.
That year there were twelve Circuits in South Ceylon which
were self-supporting, and the annual Report points out that
in all the rest of our Eastern Missions there were only five.

It is a short step from the consciousness of strength to
self-assertion in the communal life within which the Church
stands, and where such self-assertion is controlled by reverence
and actuated by motives which are unselfish and true to high
moral ideals, it is not only legitimate but obligatory.

During the year 1905 there was much feeling evoked both
in Ceylon and in missionary Committees in England because
of the adoption of the Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance by
the Legislative Council of Ceylon. Investigation had revealed
that Buddhist priests had abused their position by defrauding
the temples with which they were connected, and the ordinance
in question was to secure that administration of the temples
was to be brought under the control of Government officials.
Protests against such an ordinance had been made in Ceylon
on the ground that it would give to Buddhism the status
of an ' established ' religion. It was also felt that it would
be odious to Christian officers of Government to be associated
with the maintenance of a religion from which their reason
and their conscience revolted. In England a Committee
formed of members of the C.M.S., the B.M.S., and our own
Society waited upon the Colonial Secretary, praying that the
Royal signature should be withheld. The most that was
secured, however, was that the measure would be considered
to be tentative, and would be reconsidered after five years,
in the hope that within that time a change might take place
in the morals of the people most concerned. Honest Budd
hists must have felt the dishonour of having to apply to the
secular arm to secure honesty among those to whom was

io6 THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON

committed the upholding of the moral order enjoined by their
great teacher. This was not the sole occasion in which a
struggle had taken place between the Church and the Govern
ment because of the connexion of the latter with Buddhism.
In 1837 Mr. Hardy, while stationed in Kandy, found that
Government troops were employed to guard the temple, and
that the British Agent was in charge of ' Buddha's tooth '
and other relics, while temple processions and devil-dancing
were actually arranged and financed by Government. When
this was brought to light in England the degrading and unholy
connexion was denounced with such effect that an end was
quickly put to it by order of the supreme Government.

The Missionaries who appeared in South Ceylon during
this last period of our review have worthily upheld the great
tradition of their District. Many of them are still at work,
and the record of their service will fall to some future historian.
Others have been obliged for entirely honourable reasons to
take up work in the Church at home, and reference may be
made to three of these. In 1900 the Rev. W. J. Noble was
appointed to South Ceylon, and after twenty-two years of
service, during which he proved himself to be a Missionary
of both insight and wide vision, while at the same time he
developed great powers of organization, he was appointed by
Conference to fill the vacancy caused by the death of the Rev.
William Goudie in 1922. His appointment to Ceylon followed
that of two others, whose early promise of exceptional efficiency
on the Mission field was denied fulfilment by failure of health.
The Rev. W. H. Armstrong (1899) was attacked by malaria
of a particularly severe and persistent type, and his life was
saved only by his return to England after two years in the
island. Mr. Armstrong has since made a position for himself
in Mission work in England, and what the foreign work lost
has been gained by the work at home. His companion on
the voyage to Ceylon was the Rev. E. H. Smith, and he at
once gave evidence of special gifts in the acquirement of
language. His record during the six years he spent in Ceylon
was a particularly fine one ; but an accident while travelling
so seriously affected him that for some time it seemed as
though ministerial work of any kind would be impossible.
Happily he made at length a complete recovery, and is now
fulfilling his vocation in England. Of seventeen others sent

THE SINHALESE DISTRICT— SOUTH CEYLON 107

out during the thirteen years fourteen were still on the field
in 1913.

In the year of the centenary the statistics of the South
Ceylon District were most impressive, and the reader will do
well to ponder them.

Chapels . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Other Places for Preaching . . . . . . 118

European Missionaries . . . . . . . . 16

Ceylonese Ministers . . . . . . . . 34

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Local Preachers . . . . . . . . . . 192

Church Members . . . . . . . . . . 4,492

Members on Probation . . . . . . . . 1,344

Other baptized Adherents . . . . . . 7,448

Children in Schools . . . . . . . . 16,000

With these figures, so indicative of a living and growing
Church, we bring our review to a close. Much remains in
the story of this field which cannot be tabulated or even
described. For who can describe the movement of the Spirit
of God in the life of the Church, even when the results of that
movement are clearly seen ? The work done in the schools
especially suggests a community permeated with gracious
influences, which are still operative though unseen, and which
may in a moment be resolved in an open confession of Him
in whose name the light of truth first broke into the darkened
mind. The associations of childhood may be submerged, but
they are never destroyed, and no one can tell when the buried
seed may burst into newness of life. Or, to change the figure,
Ceylon is to-day a great altar, built up, as every altar should
be, of consecrated elements representing the lives of men
and women. Ault and Harvard, Clough, Gogerly, and many
another, stand to-day as those whose lives have gone to the
building of this great altar of sacrifice. That altar is heaped
high to-day. One spark of the heavenly fire, and the young
life of this land, consecrated from of old to the wonder of
redeeming love, will leap into a blaze, kindled from on high
by the Spirit of God.

SUPPLEMENT
THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON

THE evolution of the Tamil Ministry in North Ceylon has
followed closely the natural lines of growth from the local
agency of a Missionary Society to the pastorate of an indigenous,
self-sustaining, and self -propagating Church. It is the object
of this note to indicate the stages of this development and to
present some of the outstanding personalities.

During the earlier years the Tamil Minister was called an
Assistant Missionary. He was regarded as the agent of a
foreign Society, was remunerated accordingly, and bore no
well-defined relation to the organization or the possibilities
of a Tamil Church. The first candidate was received in 1816,
but, although the ecclesiastical status of the ordained Ceylon
Minister has always been the same as that of his European
brethren, it was not until 1887 that he sat with them in a
real and operative Synod. The crucial problems of a Native
Ministry could not be anticipated ; they were solved as they
arose. As the Church grew in numbers and in self-conscious
ness those problems began to press, so that in 1848 we find
the Rev. Peter Percival, the greatest Tamil scholar Missionary
Methodism has ever had, complaining that little had been
done towards the formation of a simple and inexpensive Native
agency. It was not until the advent of Dr. Kilner in 1859
that it became possible to reorganize the Ministry on lines that
made it in fact the Ministry of the Tamil Methodist Church.

It is remarkable that, although no Church has yet been
raised up amongst Ceylon Muhammadans, the first candidate
for the Ministry, the first indeed in Asia, was Daniel Theophilus,
a converted Muhammadan. He was accepted in 1816, but
unfortunately the next year's record of him is : ' We believe
he deceived us himself and that he was ungenerously taken
from us.' Thus vanishes the first name from our records.
So also do several others. But there were two men during
the first fifty years of the Mission who more than satisfied all

108

THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON 109

demands. The Rev. John Milton Brown, who has supplied
much of the biographical information for this note, says :
' John Philip Sanmogam was a lad of fifteen years and a
nominal Christian when the first Wesleyan Missionaries reached
Jaffna in 1814. He was attracted by the personality of Thomas
Squance and attached himself to the English Preacher. He
became Squance's first Ceylonese convert, and as soon as he was
converted began to preach. After many years of training he was
deemed worthy to take his place in the ranks of the Methodist
Ministry. He was a man of unblemished character, a diligent
Pastor, an acceptable Preacher, and won the confidence and
affection of the people wherever he was stationed. He died
in 1864, leaving a splendid record of fifty years of loyal and
loving service in the days of hard toil and small results.'

Richard Watson Vyramuttu was a Point Pedro boy, born
and trained in the precincts of the Hindu temple, of which his
father was proprietor. He became attached to the Rev. Ralph
Stott, as Sanmogam did to Squance. Soon after Mr. Stott
was transferred to Trincomalee the lad followed him. Mr.
and Mrs. Stott received him into their home and trained and
educated him as if he were their own son. Brought up in such
an atmosphere, Vyramuttu was drawn to Christ and dedicated
himself to the Master's service. At the early age of nine
teen he was received as a student and was sent to Jaffna to
continue his studies under the guidance and inspiration of
Peter Percival. Seven years he served as a student and
Catechist, and then he was welcomed into the ranks of the
Ministry. His gifts were of a different order from Sanmogam's,
He was as diligent and devoted as his senior colleague, as
transparent in character and as earnest an evangelist, but
he possessed a pulpit gift that has never been excelled in Ceylon ;
he could be eloquent and impassioned, lofty in thought,
impressive in delivery. Before he had completed his fortieth
year he had so overdrawn upon his physical powers as to be
unable to fight against an attack of Trincomalee fever, which
carried off this choice worker. Only a few months separated
the death of these two worthy preachers. With their decease
the first chapter of the history of the North Ceylon Ministry
ended, and the work of selecting and training had to begin
again, under a new leader.

John Kilner was appointed the General Superintendent of

no THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON

the District by the Conference of 1859. He had already been
connected with the Mission for twelve years, and had formed a
judgement as to the needs of the situation. He was a man
of conspicuous gifts, commanding personality, and a strategist.
When he assumed the chairmanship there were only two Tamil
Ministers, and he believed that Tamils would have to be reached
by Tamils. This truth he enforced continually, and he deter
mined that the training of an indigenous Ministry should be
his first care. He therefore gathered a class of young men,
the very best that the Tamil churches could produce, and not
only put his own best into them, but secured the highest talent
available in Jaffna to lecture to them on Tamil grammar and
literature, on mathematics and kindred subjects. And in
a few years the results began to appear.

The leading ideas of Dr. Kilner are now the commonplaceb
of enlightened missionary policy, but it needed much clarity
of vision and great personal force to apply them sixty years ago
on a field where a different ideal had been dominant for half
a century. It was his belief that Christianity could only
become indigenous in a country if the Native Church raised
its own Ministry and supported its own work. He therefore
set himself to define the relative functions of the Missionary
Society and the Church, and to impress the distinction on the
growing Christian community. Henceforward the organiza
tion of the Ministry was developed in close relation to the needs
and capacities of the Tamil Church. The ' Mission/ taught
Dr. Kilner, would eventually pass ; the ' Church ' would
remain, the permanent Christian organization, and the Tamil
Ministers would be its leaders. The function of the foreign
agency was to evangelize, found the Christian Society,
establish the educational institutions as training grounds for
both lay and ministerial leaders, and eventually to disappear.
The function of the Church was to organize and care for the
converts, feed the sheep and tend the lambs of Christ's flock,
embody and express the Christian witness before the heathen,
and to achieve autonomy as rapidly as possible, learning to
become ' missionary ' itself in the process. Until the transition
from Mission to Missionary Church was complete, European
Missionaries and Tamil Ministers would work side by side,
helping each other in their respective and complementary
tasks. But the goal should be kept steadily in view by every

THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON in

class of worker. Self-government should be granted to the
Tamil Churches as early as possible, and they should be encour
aged to assume responsibility for administration, supplying
the resources and controlling expenditure. As the indigenous
forces increased the foreign forces should decrease, and, when
sufficiently strong to stand alone, the Mission Church should be
set free. Such, in brief, were the principles of which Dr. Kilner
was the chief exponent. It followed that two particular
applications of them to the question of the Tamil Ministry
should be recognized features of District policy, viz.

(1) That in fixing stipends and allowances care should be taken not

to exceed the probable ability of the indigenous Church. A
minimum salary might be fixed by the General Committee,
below which no Church should be allowed to fall, but the
maximum salary should be left to the individual Church to
decide according to its resources.

(2) That the same principle should apply to all expenditure on

plant, whether Church or school building or Minister's dwelling-
house. The building should be in style and cost such as the
Christian community might reasonably be expected to provide,
local resources always being the measure.

These ideas and principles have been the established policy
of the District since Dr. Kilner's day, and events have shown
that he built upon a sound foundation. Progress towards
self-support and self-government has been continuous. The
larger and oldest-established Churches are now fully indepen
dent, and many others are rapidly approaching this position.
The laity has recognized its responsibilities and is taking
increasing interest in the support and control of the work.
There is now an effective lay session of the Synod. Home
Missionary Societies have also been established. And, best
of all, the Church has produced a prophetic, evangelistic,
teaching Tamil Ministry beloved of the people and competent
for its tasks.

The first to be accepted as a candidate under the new order
introduced by Dr. Kilner was Henry de Silva, a man of distinct
personality, of great gifts and beautiful devotion. Though of
Portuguese extraction and nationality, he associated himself
perfectly with his Tamil colleagues. He accepted their status
and received their modest allowances. He was a master of

H2 THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON

the Tamil language, and used it with great effect. His know
ledge of the Christian Bible and of Hindu literature made him
an effective worker among the preachers of revived and
organized Hinduism. His somewhat sudden death from
malarial fever after twelve years of strenuous labour was felt
to be a calamity to the Mission, an irreparable loss by the
younger members of the Tamil Ministry, who regarded him
as their leader.

The year following the date of Mr. de Silva's acceptance
(1865), two men of experience and character were welcomed
into the ranks — Joseph Benjamin and John Wesley Philips,
both of them men of great devotion, fidelity, and influence.
Joseph Benjamin, like his brother James, was known as a
man of God, mighty in prayer, ceaseless in pastoral visitation
and care of the flock. John Wesley Philips was a son of
Sanmogam, and inherited his father's gentleness, modesty,
graciousness, and stability. When the Synod decided to
gather the Tamils in Colombo, the young men who visited
the city to complete their education or to engage in business
or professional life, J. W. Philips was the man selected to
occupy this important position and to begin this strategic
extension of our missionary operations. How splendidly he
succeeded is known to all who are acquainted with the history
of our Church in Ceylon.

Nathaniel Niles, the Jaffna evangelist, a preacher of wit
and genius who could captivate any audience, gave two of his
sons to the Methodist Ministry, Daniel and Samuel, men of
outstanding character who have left their mark on the Tamil
community. Daniel was scholar, preacher, and poet, to whom
the Church is indebted for hymns and lyrics which enrich its
worship. Samuel had the gifts of the orator, a dignified
presence, resonant voice, and fluent delivery.

Every part of the District has made its contribution to the
Ministry. Batticaloa has given R. N. Sethucavalar, M.A., the
first Tamil from Ceylon to graduate in the Calcutta University,
Charles Kasinader, Robert A. Barnes, James D. Canagasabey,
and his son. Trincomalee has sent three of its young men —
James M. Osborn, John K. Fletcher, and Paul Ahambaram.
Point Pedro has been highly honoured. From the days of
R. W. Vyramuttu down to the present time it has yielded
precious fruit from its village schools. W. Murugasu Walton,

THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON 113

Daniel V. Thamotheram, and Yesudasen Kandiah would
amply repay the Missionary Society for all its expenditure on
this part of the field. Jaffna, with Wannarponne, has given
the richest contribution, from Sanmogam to the present day,
rich in numbers and quality. Christian Parinbam and his
brother John Ponniah, Daniel Velupillai and James T.
Appapillai, Joseph Beebee and many others, with varying
gifts have served their generation by the will of God. The
names of Edward S. Solomon and Vallipuram K. David, both
of whom died in the midst of their labours, are held in grateful
memory. Amongst the Ministers still in the active work the
names of T. Samuel Vethanayagam, Daniel S. McLelland,
and Robert Winslow must be mentioned as men who have
given able and self-sacrificing service, and are worthily sustain
ing the high traditions of the past. There is also a fine group
of younger men who combine scholarship with evangelistic
fervour and justify a confident hope that the future Tamil
Ministry will not fail the Church that has called them forth.

Much of what has been written above in relation to the North
Ceylon District applies with equal force to the South. Indeed,
the South proceeded on very similar lines to those followed
in the North, and there was raised up in the Sinhalese Church
a Ministry which at first co-operated with, and later began to
supersede, the missionary staff. From the beginning there
were kept in view those great principles of Church development
which in the issue have been shown to be of highest wisdom—
the calling out from among the people of the country of their
own Ministers, the provision of the best possible education for
such a Ministry, and the insistence upon the local Church
providing for such a Ministry when it came to take over the
responsibility of self -administration. The steady adherence
to these principles has had the happiest results in Ceylon, for it
has made the achievement of a large measure of self-support
both easy and natural, and if one-third of our Circuits are
to-day able to meet all their own financial obligations and to
govern themselves with wisdom and ability, it is because no-
effort has been spared to educate the local Church and to raise
up, alongside of the Ministry, a body of laymen who share to

ii4 THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON

the full the responsibilities of Church administration, and of
whom the Church is rightly proud.

Considerations of space make it impossible to give the names
of all, or even of many, of the Ceylonese Ministers who have
served the kingdom of God in the Methodist Church, but there
are some whose names cannot be excluded from our record.
Andrew Armour was not an Oriental, but a European, and his
name appears because it is impossible to omit mention of a
man whose career was so remarkable, and who, after serving
as a soldier in Ireland, Gibraltar, and India— in all of which
places he exercised a strong Christian influence — became a
Minister of our Church in Ceylon, and so remained for many
years. William A. Lalmon, a young man of Swiss descent, was
converted at the first service held by Wesleyan Missionaries
after their arrival in the island. He was accepted for the
Ministry in 1816, and served faithfully in the active work for
forty years. Cornelius Wijesingha was the first purely
Sinhalese Minister to be received, and from 1819 to 1864 he
witnessed a good confession in spite of much persecution and
hardship. When Peter Gerhard de Silva entered the Ministry
in 1831 its ranks were strengthened by the admission of a
preacher of evangelistic and pastoral gifts never surpassed
in our Ceylon Ministry. He is still known, especially in the
town and district of Moratuwa, as ' the Apostle.' He led
many hundreds to Christ, and established in that district
Churches whose present prosperity and strength are the direct
fruit of his labours. He was no less a pastor than an evan
gelist, and the Churches under his care grew steadily in
power while they increased in grace and purity. His
descendants of the second and third generation adorn the
ranks of the Ministry to-day, or are to be found occupying
honourable positions among the laity of the Church. In the
great controversies with Buddhists the name of David de
Silva cannot be forgotten, for he maintained the Christian
position with admirable spirit and knowledge during a time
in which a strong and informed opposition on the part of
Buddhists made itself felt. Few names among those of our
Sinhalese Ministers are held in greater honour than that of
B. Anthony Mendis, a man of striking ability in many spheres,
but chiefly remembered for his grasp of Methodist principles,
a.nd for his statesmanlike outlook upon the future of the Church.

THE INDIGENOUS MINISTRY OF CEYLON 115

Charles William de Silva maintained and added to that high
reputation which Methodism in Ceylon has had in relation to
the study of both the Sinhalese language and the literature of
Buddhism. For many years he was chief reviser of the Sin
halese Bible, being lent to the British and Foreign Bible Society
for this highly responsible task. His brother, H. de Silva
Wikramaratna, is widely known as a competent writer on
Christian subjects, and a scholar of repute.

The list might, indeed, be continued down to the present
day by the addition of many names, all worthy of being held
in remembrance. Suffice it to say that the Methodist Church
in Ceylon, both South and North, has good reason to be thankful
to God for the character and ability of its Ministers, who have
taken an ever-increasing part in the development of the Church,
and who are represented to-day by men of gifts and graces
which make them worthy members of a great succession.

PART II

METHODIST MISSIONS IN INDIA

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

(a) Religious. — Hinduism — Environment — Compromise — Nature-

Worship — Idealism and Polytheism — Brahmanism — A Mon
archical Priesthood — Philosophic Basis of Caste.

(b) Social. — Caste is both Social and Religious — Attitude of the

Christian Church to Caste — A Test Case — A Declaration —
Resultant Effects.

Hindu Religion — Lord William Bentinck — Neutrality —
A Case in the Mysore District.

(a) RELIGIOUS

IT is impossible for the student of Christian Missions in India
to enter intelligently upon his study unless he has at least
an outline picture of the position which Christianity challenges
by its declaration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A general
idea of moral and spiritual neediness as forming the object of
approach is not sufficient, for India is unique among the many
fields of human life in which the Church is at work. Even
Ceylon, which most nearly approaches it, does not reveal
that combination of Brahmanism and caste which gives to
both a resisting force possessed by neither of the two in isola
tion. The amalgam is less easily penetrated than either of its
component metals. The Christian Church in India to-day
is of appreciable dimensions. Its influence in the communal
life increases every year. But it is to be questioned whether
it has yet penetrated the armoured citadel of Hinduism, and
the long delay in reaching the position occupied by the Church
in these days cannot be understood unless account be taken
of that power of resistance. It has not been a question of
the personal qualifications of Missionaries sent to this field,

119

120 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

for whether we consider their intellectual ability, or the personal
devotion which so often has deepened into saintliness, those
who have laboured in this field will always stand high in the
reverence of the Church for both the character of their service
and the completeness of their sacrifice. Neither has it been a
matter of methods employed. Every now and then the
Church, impatient of delay, has clamoured for the trial of
some new scheme of service. It is safe to say that at one time
or another every plan of approach known to the Church has
been tried in India, with results for which the Church may
indeed give glory to God, but it would be the merest self-
delusion to claim that she has yet come to grips with the
central power which has enabled Hinduism to survive the
shock of invasion from without, and the process of internal
decay. The Church has gathered into its army the outlying
tribes and populations, thereby increasing immensely its own
power of penetration and its prospect of final victory; but it
still stands, a beleaguering force outside the walls which have
hitherto excluded it. The vital centre of Hinduism has been
touched ; the reaction which has followed may indicate that
it has been profoundly affected ; but it has not yet been
vitalized by the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and nothing short
of this will content the Church or justify the immeasurable
sacrifices offered. The student of the history of the Church
militant here on earth may well ask whence comes this amazing
power of resistance to truth as it is in Jesus.

The answer is not easily given. It will have to gather up
into some comprehensible form the whole range of a far-
extended system of religious faith and practice as these have
been observed for centuries, if indeed we may speak of
' system ' where the forms of faith have been so diversified.
Nature-worship, Animism, Polytheism, Atheism, and the most
uncompromising Idealism known in the history of human
thought, jostle one another throughout the whole course of
religious history as we find it within the area which we name
' India/ and in their earlier stages there is no chronology to
enable us to mark the steps by which one rose, or those by
which another fell. If it is at all possible to speak of a single
religious instinct among peoples so highly diversified, then we
have to acknowledge that nowhere else do we find one so
flexible, so ready to absorb and assimilate the most diverse

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 121

and conflicting forms, so skilled in reconciling ideas which are
mutually destructive. Its vitality has been amazing. It
has from time to time produced new sects, each of which has
shown a considerable amount of formative force, and these
persist in some form or other, even when they have ceased to
exhibit any distinctive features in the final product. Along
side of this complicated system of faith, and in closest relations
to it, exist human institutions, and though these have in later
days shown some tendency to change under the enormous
pressure of Western civilization, yet such changes have only
recently appeared, and in enormous tracts, both social and
geographical, the customs of long-past centuries hold good.
Even where the more cruel or debasing of these have been
suppressed by the rule of Western Governments it often appears
that the submission of their votaries is far from assured, and
cases of Sati, for instance, are not unknown.

We have to bring all this complex and highly diversified
religious life into some sort of unity before we can hope to see
that central position of which we are in search. It is not
surprising that some have roundly declared that there is no
such thing as ' the Hindu religion.' Others have found it in
Brahmanism, confining their attention to the intellectual
activities and the power of self-adaptation exhibited by the
most remarkable priesthood of which we have any record.
Others, again, have found it embodied in human institutions
and customs, and these have claimed that the Hindu religion
is to be found in the social system which we know under the
name of ' caste.' It is clear that of these two the one class has
been impressed by faith and the other by practice. But in
considering such a question as religion the two cannot be
divorced. For religion is a ' view of God and the world.' On
the one hand, it contemplates the Divine source and goal of all
things, and on the other it finds expression in human deeds
and the corporate life of man.

There is one general observation which may be made here,
and which may assist us in arriving at a conclusion. In India
we are confronted with an intense intellectual force acting
under enervating conditions of life. Environment plays its
part in all religious expression. The rigid outlines of the
Arabian desert are reflected in the stern simplicity of the
Muhammadan creed. The aesthetic character of Greece, and

122 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

the finality of Roman law, appear in the life of the Eastern
and the Western Church ; and when the Aryan migrated to the
burning plains of India he brought his more highly developed
mind into an atmosphere which was inimical to thinking out
to final conclusions the problems which arose in dealing with
the relations of primitive religions to his own more highly
developed faith. The method of compromise to secure uni
formity was almost inevitable. Tolerance of that which was
directly contradictory was seen to be the line of least resistance.
Any more strenuous method was difficult in the new physical
surroundings. But while an easy-going tolerance allowed the
variant faith to continue side by side with that which the Aryan
brought with him, he set himself to secure his own supremacy
by assimilating as much as was possible from the system with
which he was in contact. The eclecticism forced upon him
secured for him at last the spiritual supremacy which he de
sired, and it was carried to an extreme, with results which are
sufficiently apparent to-day. Truth lost the sharpness of its
outline. The mind became so flexible in adopting forms that
were mutually contradictory that it became flabby rather than
flexible, and conduct was affected accordingly. Mutually
exclusive positions were accepted as equally valid, and the
will became correspondingly weakened. Even mental exertion
is difficult when the thermometer registers a hundred degrees
of heat in the shade, but to yield to this limitation, and to take
the easy way of tolerance through dislike of exertion, is fatal.
It leads to indefmiteness of thought, to weakness in resolution,
and to a feebleness in self-determination which may issue at
last in the complete paralysis of the will.

It is probable that this concession to environment accounts
for the contradiction between faith and practice which we have
seen is one of our embarrassments, but there is another factor
which has been most powerful in forming the ultimate product.
The Brahman in his pride of intellectual superiority, residing
largely in the domain of religion, was determined to maintain
his privileged position against the mass of animistic belief
which he found when he entered the plains of South India.
He was unwilling to undertake the always difficult process of
securing an intelligent conviction in those who were of a
different way of thinking ; he chose the easier way of self-
accommodation, and compromised what to him was truth in

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 123

order to achieve the selfish end of maintaining his position as
spiritual dictator to his fellows. Lacking in his composition
the hard grain which refuses to stretch conviction beyond the
confines of truth, he found that his philosophy was sufficiently
elastic to cover any superstition, however absurd, and to con
done any custom, however immoral. He was thus able to
secure for his order not only the direction of public ceremonial
in the temple, not only the exclusive authority to interpret
both the recorded wisdom of the past and the common tradi
tions of successive generations, but the even more powerful
influence of the domestic priesthood. His was the voice which
declared the propitious day for the family undertaking, and
it was he who ordered — at a price — the domestic ritual to be
observed at birth, at marriage, and at death. He could make
any concession to local prejudice which he might think desir
able, and he incorporated into his own more philosophical
system the crudities of an inferior faith.

What was the Animism which thus formed the testing of
sincerity in these Aryan invaders of India ? It is a view of
the world as inhabited by spirits (animae). It is a recognition
of dark, mysterious forces of which no account can be given.
Every object or process which was unknown or unusual was
held to be the abode of mysterious power. But, further,
such powers were invariably held to be malignant. The un
known was considered to be invariably inimical, and such
worship as was paid was no grateful offering symbolizing the
allegiance and the devotion of the worshipper, but a pro
pitiatory gift intended to buy off the threatening peril. That
is to say that the Dravidian, and still more the aboriginal tribe
in the hills, lived in an atmosphere of fear ; such things as the
snake, or such experiences as that of disease, indicated to him
the presence of a malignant power before which he bowed in
terror, and which he sought to pacify by such offerings as were
within his reach. Ignorance and fear were the twin motives
of his religious observance. The priests who presided over
his ritual were sorcerers who were learned in the arts of magic,
and who were able thereby to appease and propitiate the
hostile power. Then the supreme mystery of death played
no small part in forming his creed. That which had left the
body was conceived of as a ghost, and a hostile ghost, which
needed propitiatory offerings if it was to desist from its

124 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

otherwise inevitable menace to living beings. The worship of
ancestors, always an instinct in primaeval man, thus became
linked with the worship of inanimate objects, whose one claim
to worship was that they were dangerous. Ancestral worship
it was which imported into the faith of the people those traces
of belief in a personal deity which may be detected in Animism.
The doctrine of transmigration was developed later, but its
traces, too, are to be found in the primaeval belief which we
are now considering, since the wandering ghost might find a
new habitation in some other human body or within some
natural object.

Such a religion, it will be easily seen, lends itself to every
form of superstition, and usually passes away as education
narrows the realm of the unknown, and reveals the causes of
natural phenomena. How, then, are we to explain the fact
that the Hindu religion remains full of this element of super
stition, so that even the ' twice-born' ' Aryan who subscribes
to a philosophy of pure idealism is as much under its influence
as if he were the merest Animist ? The answer is that this
element persists because it was taken up into the more intel
lectual system. It was brought into alliance with the philo
sophy of the Aryans. These last were not concerned with
driving away from the minds of their Dravidian brethren the
darkness which enveloped their minds, but rather with the
exploiting of it to their own advantage. Their priests stretched
their philosophy so as to cover every form of religious observ
ance, however degrading it might be. By ' peaceful penetra
tion ' they secured a complete spiritual supremacy. Incor
poration gave them dominance. But it was at a terrible cost.
Their own thought, which had approached a true monotheism,
became debased by idolatry, and such gleams of moral con
sciousness as appear in the earlier and loftier hymns of the
Rigveda were speedily quenched in the allowance, and the
practice, of gross immoralities. The principle of accommoda
tion and compromise led to moral and spiritual corruption.
The whole process has been analysed for us by a master mind
in the terrible verses which we find in the first chapter of St.
Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and the history of religion in
India is the object-lesson which verifies the apostolic indict
ment of natural religion, so swiftly assuming the most un
natural forms unless led to its fulfilment by Divine revelation.

125

Some tribes have retained their Animism almost without
admixture, but these are tribes which have retreated before
the invaders of their country into the fastnesses of the hills.
Others have been so far influenced by Aryan thought that they
now find themselves related to it in a sense. They have, indeed,
no part in the worship offered by their superiors, nor does
the Brahman priest attempt to control them. They are
outcast from the four great divisions of Hindu society. These
latter are dependent upon them for all sorts of menial labour,
and often exact this so unscrupulously as to reduce their
victims to a condition of serfdom, if not of actual slavery.
These, again, have approximated, as far as they were allowed,
to the custom of the higher classes, and there are traces among
them of some attempt to set up caste distinctions within their
own community, separate as this is. Thus the ' right-hand
Pariahs ' refuse to intermarry with the ' left-hand Pariahs.'
There is, however, a distinct penetration of thought derived
from Aryans among these despised people. Anything ap
proaching a system of philosophy is not to be sought among
them. It is entirely absent. But the effects of Brahmanical
thought are to be found even among their crude conceptions.
Just as the Aryan has allowed himself to be affected by
Animistic belief and superstition, these Animists have
breathed the atmosphere of Pantheistic teaching, until there
have appeared among them the same moral confusions, the
same lack of moral responsibility, and the same hopelessness
of salvation, which characterize those who accept Pantheism
as their interpretation of ' God and the World.'

It would be well-nigh impossible to understand how such a mass
of disconnected and contradictory elements as popular Hinduism,
interpenetrated as it is by the most despicable elements of Fetishism
and idolatry, could have offered such solid resistance to Christianity
had it not been possessed of three distinct factors by which its marvel
lous power is upheld. It is these three factors which must be considered
as the real hindrance to Christianity — the caste of the Brahmans, the
general caste system, and Indian Pantheism.1

It is among these that the largest accessions to the
Christian Church have been secured. They have gained little
by their approach to the Hinduism of their superiors, and are

1 History of Missions in India, by Dr. Julius Richter, p. 252.

126 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

generally treated by caste Hindus with scorn and con
tempt. Their actual condition is one of the utmost degrada
tion and ignorance. Christianity appeals to them as opening
' a door of hope/ and their one opportunity of education and
of advancement in the social life of their country, while it
also brings to them the Divine gift of moral deliverance. To
them Christ is the great Liberator.

When we pass to consider the more formulated theology
of the higher classes we find ourselves in an entirely different
atmosphere. We may not linger over the vexed question
whether the gross forms of Fetishism and Animism preceded or
followed the more refined Aryanism which finally absorbed
and dominated it. Some scholars have contended that the
former represents a more original form of faith. But the idea of
God must in some dim form have existed in the human mind
before man invested the twisted trunk of a tree with deity.
A curiously shaped stone does not in itself suggest God. It
is claimed that the conception of something other than and
beyond the physical envelope must have existed in the mind
before it could have conceived the idea that the dead hero
or revered ancestor had passed into a realm of incorporeal
life. The best view would seem to be that both Fetishism
and Animism are decadent forms of religion, and that neither
can be considered to be primary. What, then, was the original
religion ? The answer has been found in the sacred books of
India. It is in the Vedas that we come upon the earliest
ideas of God of which we have any record either in writings
or in the transmitted cults of primaeval races. There are
those who tell us that even the Vedas do not carry us far
enough back, but we must make a start somewhere, and we
have nothing available which goes so far back as the great
hymns to be found in the Rig, the oldest of the Vedas. In
these we find a deification of the powers and processes of
nature in all their forms, whether they be mysterious,
beneficent, or destructive. The highest place is probably
held by Varuna, which was the great arch of the sky above
the earth. Another name for the same deity is ' Divas-Pitar,'
which again appears as the Latin ' Jupiter,' and which, if we
may translate its two elements, may be rendered ' Father of
Lights.' This nomenclature would seem to sustain Dr.
Menzies when he says :

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 127

Religion began with the impression from without of great natural
objects co-operating with an inner presentiment of the infinite, which
they met to a greater degree than any objects which men had tried
before. Religion was due accordingly to aesthetic impressions from
without, answering an aesthetic and intellectual need.

Of natural objects none are so mysterious and impressive
as the starry heavens, which every night gave birth to myriads
of stars, which moved according to certain laws, but gave no
answer to the questions Whence ? How ? and Why ? It is
also noteworthy that it is in hymns to Varuna that we come
upon fitful gleams of the conception that this deity is a moral
governor from whose myriad eyes nothing human is hidden.
Thus in one of the hymns we read :

O Varuna, whatever the offence may be
That we as men commit against the heavenly folk.
When through our want of thought we violate thy laws,
Chastise us not, O God, for that iniquity.

In such prayers India made its nearest approach to that con
ception of a righteous God which we attribute to revealed
religion. But the conception was quickly obscured, and this
was due to the human impulse to seek from such a deity the
supply of things needed for the support of existence. For
from the same heavens thus worshipped came both the fertiliz
ing rain and the rending lightning, and deity was ascribed to
both of these under the names of Indra and Agni. When that
stage was reached there was a transition from the Monotheism
which seemed to be on the horizon of the Aryan mind to the
Polytheism into which it quickly lapsed. But the earliest
motives were more than a mere desire for food or fear of death.
To quote Dr. Menzies again :

The intellectual craving, the desire to know the nature of the
world he lived in, and to refer himself to the highest principles of it,
as far as that could be managed ; the aesthetic need, the desire to have
to do with objects which filled his imagination ; the moral need, the
desire not to occupy a purely isolated position but to place himself
under some authority, and to feel some obligation, — these also, though
in the dimmest way, as matters of presentiment rather than of clear
consciousness, entered into the earliest worship of the heavenly powers.

With the recognition of other and differing forces the mind of
the Aryan thus passed to a more polytheistic conception, and

128 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

there was no staying that process when it had once begun.
But as the Vedic poets speak of the one god they are immediately
addressing at any moment as supreme, and heap upon him all
the highest attributes, while not denying the divinity of other
gods, the term ' Henotheism ' has been coined as expressing
more accurately than either Monotheism or Polytheism the
Vedic conception of the Divine.

But side by side with this polytheistic process there sprang
up a tendency destined to play an all-important part in shaping
the Hindu conception of God. Against the Polytheism thus
early beginning to appear there was bound to be a reaction on
the intellectual side, due to the demand of the mind for some
central unity in its conception of God and the world, and thus
there arose, fitfully at first — there are indications even in the
Vedic hymns — but later in gathering force what we call
Pantheism. In its full development the unity desired was
found by roundly denying the existence of anything but God.
Necessarily this deity was an impersonal ' Substance/ and
the neuter ' Brahma ' was chosen as the name for that deity.

With this tendency there went another. The intellectual
movement did not stand alone ; there went with it the sacer
dotal. The more popular movement was in the direction of
appeasing or cajoling the deity, and the method adopted — a
natural one of great significance — was that of sacrifice. This
gave rise to a priestly class, and the latter set out to exploit
in its own interests the religious feeling of the time, which had
then passed from the stage of adoration to that of securing
favour or averting disaster. Under the title ' Brahman ' the
priest finally secured the pre-eminent position in India, and
still holds that position. As interpreters of the Divine
mysteries, and as the ministers of the ritual necessary to make
sacrifice effectual, they encouraged the tendency to Polytheism
and the multiplication of sacrificial rites, while for the benefit
of the more intellectual they continued to expound these as
symbols. The ignorant contented themselves with the material
form ; the initiated were taught to look beyond the form to
the underlying essentials. Their position gave them also
the opportunity of absorbing and shaping the more Animistic
ideas of the Dravidians, and so eventually there arose the most
gigantic system of idolatry, until ' their land was full of idols,
and their shrines were to be found under every green tree and

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 129

on every high hill.' It is scarcely necessary to point out that
all this led to the obscuring, and finally to the destruction, of
all moral element in the deity, which, as we have seen, seemed
to be about to be posited by the writers of the best hymns in
the Vedas. Two reactions followed, each inclining to the
intellectual side of religion. Scepticism put forward a material
explanation of the facts of the world and of human existence,
but this did not remain long unchallenged, and an idealistic
conception of God and the world arose. This gave abundant
room for philosophic speculation, while it professed to satisfy
the craving of the human heart for union with the Divine.
But the philosophic basis on which it rested was imperfect
and untrue to the facts of life, and the union which it offered
was no true ' union/ but rather the obliterating of one of the
uniting factors. As far as the human spirit is concerned, the
Vedantist ' created a vacuum and called it " Peace." '

The Brahmans have, as a class, always shown themselves
to be quick in discovering the secret of power, and as ready to
make it the monopoly of their class. Their ' order ' was both
sacerdotal and intellectual. When religion offered a position
of supremacy they made themselves the sole authority in
deciding what was the true method of ritual, and they claimed
that in the offering of all sacrifice ' validity ' had been given
to them. They were also the only class that gave themselves
up to the acquirement of learning, and since all ceremonial
directions were in Sanskrit, they became by their knowledge
of that language interpreters of the sacred records as well as
administrators of the sacraments. They were both priests
and professors. Later on, when Western knowledge was
seen to be the key to power, their youth crowded the schools
and coUeges in which English and science were taught,
and when, later still, social influence and a lucrative profession
went with an official appointment under Government, the
percentage of Brahmans who sought the coveted posts was
far greater than that of all other castes put together. With
these later developments we have nothing to do in these pages.
But as a sacerdotal class they form the object of our serious
consideration, for it is in them that the Missionary finds his
most strenuous opponents. Nor need we wonder at this.
Few hierarchies, if any, enjoy a more undisputed tenure of
the reverence and support of their fellow nationals. The
9

130 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

religious consciousness of India — the most profound of its
kind — has for more than fifteen hundred years accepted them as
the authoritative mediators between God and man. The fear
of hostile deities, or the instinctive desire to be in alliance with
unknown supernatural powers, brought many gifts to the
temple, and they became the residuary legatees of all such
bequests. With the exception of the Mahratta supremacy, in
which the political power was Brahman, they have never
attempted to grasp the reins of secular power. The
monarchical priesthood gave them all that they desired. Most
of all it gave them the final word in determining the forms
which the life of the family should take, and in directing the
channels in which it should flow, for the influence of the
Brahman as priest is even greater in the home than in the
temple. The whole life of a man in India is ordered and
controlled by the family Purohita. It is the latter who directs
the ceremonies to be observed before his birth, and it is he
who orders the funeral rites to be performed after his death,
while between these two events in the individual life every
movement is governed and controlled by the priest in the
household. The influence of such men established within the
jealously guarded citadel of the family life is incalculable.

For the securing of this position the Brahman appealed to
two of the greatest powers that have worked in forming the
convictions of men. They have appealed to a Divine sanction
and to the sacredness of tradition. In the earlier hymns of
the Rig Veda, while there is to be seen the distinction of social
classes common to all nations, those distinctions had not yet
hardened into the inflexible system knows as ' Caste/ but in
the tenth book there occurs a passage which speaks of the
warrior as sprung from the arms of deity, the merchant from
the thighs, and the artisan from the feet, but the Brahman
comes from the mouth of God. Supremacy was thus assigned
to the Brahman on the ground of a Divine ordination.
Centuries passed, and though that social order was challenged
by the warrior class, and though the exclusive religious pre
tensions of the Brahmans were denied by the Buddhist, the
Brahman triumphed over both, and presently found himself
entrenched in the submission of all other classes of society,
until he was able to make the further appeal to tradition as
vindicating his claim and guaranteeing his position. Tradition

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND I3I

has not wholly lost its power even in the West, but in the
East that power is still effective in shaping the obedience of
men.

Now all this, if it stood alone, would not wholly account
for the influence of the Brahman. In isolation it would be
only a very ancient illustration of the attainment of power
through ecclesiasticism, and of the consolidation of that power
in a priestly order. Its exclusiveness is a characteristic feature
of all hierarchical orders. It reveals the selfishness which
creeps in whenever vested interests begin to appear, and its
' lust for power,' which rose at last to a spirit which claims,
or at least accepts, a quasi-deification of the priest, is to be
seen more or less developed in every example of a monarchical
priesthood. Such positions have been challenged, and such
pretensions have been resisted not once or twice in the history
of religion. That which has co-operated to make Brahmanism
in India the dominant power which, after so many centuries,
it is, will be found in the stereotyping effect produced upon the
whole social order in India by caste. The resisting power
which Brahmanism exerts against Christianity would have
long since given way but for the sanction, so tremendous,
which it has found in caste. If, then, we would understand
the resistance to missionary appeals which is peculiar to India
we must consider that notorious system a little more in detail.

(b) SOCIAL

The social status of the individual was determined in accor
dance with the working of the law of Karma, the retributive
element in all life, as the Hindu conceived it. ' Karma ' means
' action ' ; and action was conceived as carrying in itself a
certain quality which worked out in the future of the individual
who performed it. The whole of his subsequent experience
was inevitably determined by the character of the act. His
birth in a subsequent state of existence was the result of his
action in those which had preceded it. The reward of good
deeds was birth into a Brahman family ; the penalty of evil
deeds was to be born a Pariah, or the wrong-doer might even
be reborn in one or other of the lowest forms of animal life.

132 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

All social distinctions, therefore, were looked upon as the
inevitable result of Karma, and behind that law it was im
possible to go. There was no appeal against its verdict.

We repeat that the earlier class distinctions in India were
fairly fluid ; they do not exhibit the rigidity of the later develop
ment. They were also, in their administrative functions,
reasonable safeguards in remote ages for the maintenance of
racial superiority. If the Aryans had tolerated any sort of
communism with the aborigines in such matters as marriage
or the partaking of food, they would soon have lost whatever
gave them their original distinction. Their racial character
would have been submerged, and it was the instinct of self-
preservation which led them to interdict the sharing of a meal
with people whose food was often repulsive, or the giving of
their children in marriage to those whose social qualifications
were so immeasurably inferior as those of the aboriginal tribes
were, and still are in many instances. It was the means of
maintaining the civilization of those days. There was another
position which they guarded by their social exclusiveness.
Industries were established upon a basis of heredity.

Caste did for many centuries in India the work which was done in
Europe by the mediaeval trade-guilds. The system springs from
different ideas, yet worked on much the same lines. It preserved
learning by isolating the Brahman caste and throwing on them the
exclusive duty and privilege of teaching. It preserved manual skill
and knowledge of arts and industries by compelling boys to follow the
profession of their father. A permanent division of labour was also
secured. By means of caste-guilds wages and prices were maintained
at a moderate standard.1

Where, then, did the pernicious element enter into a system
for which there was so much to be said ? The answer to that
question is to be found rather on the ethical than on the
sociological side of Hindu life. That which gives to caste its
distinctive peculiarity is this — that it substitutes for the law
of God and its reflex in the human conscience the moral findings
and edicts of a social group. It is the supreme example of
communistic morality.

These pages offer no opportunity for an examination or even
a description of Hindu idealism, but we cannot penetrate to
the secret centre of caste or understand its most subversive

1 The Crown of Hinduism, by J. N. Farquhar, p. 168.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 133

principle unless some reference be made to the Vedantism
which of all the six schools of philosophy is that which pervades
the mind and forms the conviction of practically all Hindus
to-day ; and, as we have already said, the student of Missions
in India will not be able to account for the slow progress of
Christianity in that country, nor will he understand the signi
ficance of its present more rapid development, unless the
implications of caste are clearly before him. Vedantism
teaches that all that belongs to the realm of consciousness
has no real existence. The spell of Maya — illusion — rests
not only upon the world of things perceived, but also upon
that which imagines itself to perceive it. There is but one
reality, and that is Brahma ; all else is but the wave — a passing
phase of an all-pervasive element, or the spark — a momentary
emanation from its parent flame. In all ages and in all lands
men have sought for ' that which is,' the one essential reality
which will enable them to interpret phenomena and grasp the
significance of that which only appears. India in her turn
has given her particular solution to this world-problem. She
finds reality by roundly denying the existence of phenomena.
She gets rid of the troublesome ' many ' by declaring its non-
existence, and she is thus left with the ' one ' as the sum-total
of all that is or seems to be. In so far as she is concerned she
has got rid of individuality, and with individuality all idea
of personal freedom or even existence is destroyed.

Individual obligation, of course, goes by the board where
this teaching is accepted, and man is left a mere phase of
passionless Being within which no distinctions of right and
wrong can arise. Should he be found involved in actions
reprehensible to others he is without reproach, and as he is a
phase of the Eternal, the evil condemned by the unenlightened
is but a manifestation of that Eternal, and lacks all moral
significance. To us this is morality in chaos ; to the Hindu it
is consistent Pantheism. But human society, if it is to con
tinue, must have its conventions even though it may not be
able to discover law. Some sort of obligation must be enforced
if the social fabric is to hang together, and, having destroyed
it in the individual, the Hindu philosopher must find its
equivalent elsewhere. He found it in the social group or the
trade-guild already in existence. He builds his communal
life upon a basis of collectivism. Not that which a man thinks

134 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

is right becomes right for him, but that which commends
itself to the class-consciousness of the society into which he is
born. Individual liberty is displaced by corporate determina
tion. So long as a man observes the rules of his group, what
ever form those rules may take, so long will he be assured of
all that he needs for at least a tolerable existence. Let him
but once set at nought the decisions of his group, or presume
to act on his own initiative, and he is held to have committed
the one sin which Hinduism admits, and for that sin there is
no forgiveness, either in this world or in that which is to come.
When this moral sanction was given to caste it transformed it
from a mere system of class distinctions or trade-guilds into
the most binding, the most inexorable, the most inevitable
law of which human society has any knowledge. But, we
repeat, this dread moral sanction with which caste is armed
sprang out of the implications of the popular philosophy.
Caste is the efflorescence of pantheistic thought, and if it be
ever deprived of power this will be due to dethronement of
Pantheism from its place in the Hindu mind, and the recovery
of the power of self-determination, with its corollary of personal
obligation, by the individual. For the Christian to rejoice
over the modification of rules or the abrogation of them, as
foreshadowing the removal of this great obstacle, indicates
only a failure to grasp the true nature of caste. For rules may
be altered or annulled as the group may determine, and still
leave that group supreme in enforcing its collective will upon
the individuals of which it is composed. These last will not
be any more free to act in accordance with a merely personal
conviction.

Such a view of caste explains why it is that Hindu society
is so strangely and so violently moved when an individual
belonging to any of the main divisions of caste accepts ad
mission into the Christian communion by baptism. On such
occasions the whole Hindu society suffers from a feeling of
outrage. It is not because the convert has changed his opinion ;
for a Hindu may hold any opinion which commends itself to
him and still remain within the pale of his social group and
enjoy all its privileges. But in entering another communion
outside of that into which he was born, and in doing so on his
personal responsibility, he is really defying the basal moral
authority in Hinduism.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 135

If it is asked how this resisting power is likely to be des
troyed, the answer will be found in the fact of the Christian
Church in India. In this the Hindu sees the actual refutation
of his great contention. He finds in his very midst those who,
belonging to the same race as himself, are acting in defiance
of the rules he has imposed upon himself. The members of
that Church enjoy all the privileges of a free self-determination,
and by the exercise of this, under the guidance and control
of the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus, they are already rising
rapidly in the social scale. The Pariah may become the
teacher, the lawyer, the judge, or — highest honour of all — he
may become a Minister in the things of God, unfold the
mysteries of Divine revelation, and plead with God for men.
Self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control are leading
him, as Tennyson taught, to sovereign power. No argument
of the schools, no subtlety in dialectics, can be half so
subversive of the main positions of Pantheism as the fact of the
Christian Church denying the teaching so long and so strongly
held, and defying the social system which in its final develop
ment stands so closely connected with that philosophy which
for many centuries has held India in a state of completest
thraldom.

We have discussed the relation of caste to the religious and
philosophic side of Hindu life, but it is now necessary to write
a little more in detail as to the attitude of the early Missionaries
of the Methodist Church to this great institution. How much
it had to do with the slow progress of the Church in India may
be judged from the fact that in the oldest District, that of
Negapatam, after many years of devoted service on the part
of able men, there were less than a score of Church members,
and the meagreness of this result is attributed almost entirely
to caste. It had an even more disastrous effect upon the slowly
forming Indian Ministry, as we shall see.

It must be steadily kept in mind that caste is both social
and religious in character, and that the Brahmans had been
astute enough to interweave the two strands in such a way as
to make it impossible to isolate the one from the other. As
a social and economic system there is much to be said on behalf
of caste. As an organization of trade-guilds it has played an
important part in Hindu economics, and as a recognition of

136 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

social distinctions in occupation, in mental culture, and in
custom, it has its equivalent in distinctions which are familiar
enough in European life. If it were possible to isolate these
strata in India there would be much to be said in favour of
regarding caste as a matter with which the Church was not
immediately concerned, and which would be regulated and
rendered reasonable by the development in India of the
Christian ethic. There were, indeed, some Missionary Societies
which took this point of view. Romanists distinctly tolerated
the observance of caste within the Church, and this
toleration of theirs entailed endless difficulty for Methodist
Missionaries when certain of their adherents seceded and
sought to enter a Protestant communion. The Leipzig Mis
sionary Society took up a somewhat similar position. In their
churches there were separate entrances for Sudras and for
Panchamas, and different portions of the church were allotted
to the two classes, while in the observance of the Lord's Supper
Sudras took precedence of Panchamas. Even the old Danish
Church had not taken any distinctly hostile attitude to caste.
Its Missionaries hoped that the increasing knowledge of Christ
would in time eradicate the evil. But the very opposite effect
was seen, and the spirit of social exclusiveness destroyed all
consciousness of Christian brotherhood and of equality in the
sight of God, while many debasing characteristics of Hindu
observance crept into, and denied, the ritual of the Church.
In Madras the service of Holy Communion was celebrated on
one day for Sudras and on another day for Panchamas. When
the Anglicans took over what remained of the Danish Mission
such abuses created enormous difficulty for Bishop Wilson
and others.

These and other Societies, who looked upon caste as a matter
of indifference to the Church, or one that was capable of
amelioration, ignored the fact that caste was, as we have
shown, bound up with a system of philosophy with which
Christian faith was in hopeless antagonism. Its entire system
of moral obligation was based, not upon the freedom of the
individual voluntarily surrendered to Christ, but upon the
corporate determination of the social group within which the
individual took his place, and apart from which the individual
was not justified in taking action. The law of conscience gave
way to a system of corporate morality, and from the sanctions

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 137

of that system there was no appeal. It is difficult to see how
the Christian Church could have tolerated the observance of
such a system by its members. But even on the social side
there is an irreconcilable antagonism between Christianity
and caste. The former makes ' the brotherhood of man ' one
of its most prominent axioms. It declares that all men are
one in Christ Jesus, and the equal privilege of all believers in
spiritual things is part of its creed. ' The communion of
saints ' is to the Church not a matter which is open to discus
sion, or that admits of rank or grade within that sacred fellow
ship. But all this, so happily distinctive of true Christianity,
is directly opposed to the spirit of caste, and the very forms
of observance in the service of communion, which obtained
wherever it was recognized, severed the Christian Sudra from
the Christian Panchama as distinctly and as irrevocably as
if they still remained within the pale of Hinduism.

The pioneer Missionaries of the Methodist Church were
early confronted with the question of caste. We shall relate
in another chapter the story of Melnattam, where a number
of persons seceded from the Romish Church and put them
selves under the instruction of the Methodists. Their former
teachers had shown something more than toleration of caste,
and they expected that the same attitude would be observed
in the Church which they now entered. At Negapatam also
there were many Christians who observed caste, and the
parents of boys in the Mission boarding school were urgent in
seeking for a recognition of its social distinctions in that
institution. In 1843 the Rev. Thomas Cryer was appointed
to that Circuit, and he at once took up a strongly antagonistic
position in the matter. In 1847 we nnd him refusing to meet
in Class those who continued to observe caste, nor would he
administer to them the Sacrament. The Church members
at both Melnattam and Manargudi were practically put out
of Society. Cryer's position was all the stronger because these
persons not only maintained the social distinctions of caste,
but also showed a ' strong inclination towards heathenish
practices and customs.' In the Synod which followed Cryer
was called upon to justify his drastic action, and the finding
of the Synod was as follows :

On hearing Brother Cryer's statement this meeting was of opinion
that the step taken by him is one of doubtful character so long as the

I38 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Society retains as accredited Preachers men who observe and hold
caste, but it is of opinion that the time has come when decided measures
should be adopted.

There were at that time in the service of the Mission two
Assistant Missionaries, A. D. Ponniah and S. Devasagayam,
and from the first it was apparent that both of these adhered
to caste rules. The conflict which presently began between
the Missionaries and caste observance raged for the most part
in connexion with the question of the ministerial position of
these men. For in 1846 Mr. Ponniah had reached the stage
at which, under ordinary circumstances, he would have been
recommended for ordination and ' full connexion/ but when
challenged in the matter of caste he refused to take up the
position to which he was invited. He was therefore kept in
the grade of ' a Preacher on trial.' The following year the
same course was followed in the case of his colleague, Mr.
Devasagayam, and in 1847 the Synod recommended that the
two men be no longer recognized as ' Assistant Missionaries.'
The home Committee hesitated to ask the Conference to con
firm this, and if the reader is surprised at their thus over-riding
the decisions of the Synod he must remember that the signifi
cance of caste was little understood at that time in England,
and also that the Committee was looking forward eagerly to
the formation of an indigenous Ministry in India. The Com
mittee asked the Synod to revise their action, in the hope that
some way out of the difficulty would be found.

Our space does not allow us to record the details of the
conversations and negotiations which followed. The two
men insisted that they held to caste solely on the ground that
it was a recognition of civil and social privilege, and that when
a man broke his caste by eating and drinking with those of
another, he exposed himself and his children to the forfeiture
of the civil and social privileges to which they were entitled.
The Missionaries, on the other hand, insisted that whether
caste be civil or religious it certainly ' divides man from man
and places an impassable barrier between different classes
in the family of God.' It will be observed that the Synod did
not raise the question of the religious significance of caste,
but based its position on the practical matter of its denial,
or nullification, of the Christian teaching of brotherhood

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 139

between man and man. Perhaps they were better able by
doing so to bring the matter to an issue. They had what was
scarcely more than an instinct that the system was incom
patible with Christianity, and on that they took action ; but
it is certain that if they had tolerated the observance of caste
within the Church they would have found its religious implica
tions appearing in due course, and the Christian Church would
have become permeated by the inconsistencies and the mass
of observances which go with caste. They would have been
unable to put forward in good faith the Christian teaching as
to the freedom of the individual, and with the suppression of
that distinctive truth the whole basis of moral responsibility
would have been taken away, and the Church would have had
to reconsider its doctrine of sin. The Church would have
taken rank as a ' Christian caste ' — a position which its Brah
man opponents would have readily allowed, thus winning
their oft-repeated victory by the absorption of the opposing
force. The moral regeneration of India would have been
relegated to a still more distant future, and the elevation of
the lower classes into the freedom with which Christ makes
His people free would have ceased to be the social ideal and
the hope of millions of men.

The test case afforded by the attitude of the two Assistant
Missionaries ended in their withdrawal from the Methodist
Church, and the Missionaries proceeded to make an all-
important declaration :

We unanimously agree that :

1. No person holding caste in any respect shall be employed as a
paid agent in the Church.

2. No person holding caste in any respect shall be admitted as a
member of our Society.

3. No candidate for admission into the Church shall be baptized
until he has given satisfactory proof of having entirely renounced caste.

This emphatic declaration led to a reduction of the existing
membership, and prevented any great accession to the Church
in the immediate future. It also reversed the proportion of
Sudras to Panchamas in the Churches of South India,1 so that

1 Of the ninety-one thousand Native Christians in 1851 two-thirds were Sudras
(Richter, A History of Missions in India, p. 232).

140 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

the latter became numerically increasingly prominent. But
that declaration saved the Church.

It must not be assumed that Wesleyan Methodists were
alone in thus opposing the observance of caste in the Church.
The Madras Missionary Conference of 1848 took the extreme
step of declaring that no one should be baptized who did not
break caste and partake of food prepared by a Pariah.1 In
the Minutes of the Bangalore Conference of 1879 a more
reasoned resolution appears, to the effect that

The Conference does not hold caste to be in theory and practice a
merely civil class distinction, but rather, and to an overwhelming
extent, a purely religious institution. Looked at in this light, it is
diametrically opposed to the Christian doctrine of the unity of mankind
and of the brotherhood of all true Christians. It is therefore the duty
of all Missionaries and Societies to demand an absolute renunciation of
caste and all its outward manifestations from those who desire to be
received into the Church of Christ.

But an institution so deep-rooted in Hindu social life is not
eradicated in a moment ; it is not destroyed by Conference
resolutions. So recently as 1900 the Rev. J. P. Jones thought
it necessary to ask the Madras Missionary Conference to con
sider the question once again, ' inasmuch as the evil is eating
at the vitals of the Church in South India.' In a powerful
address he insisted that the observance of caste was ' Hinduism
incarnate/ and goes on to say :

To-day Hinduism and caste are convertible terms, and if ever there
was a spirit of Anti-Christ in the Church of God it is that of caste in the
Church in India to-day. It is antagonistic to the Church of Christ
and of His Gospel at all points. It exists and thrives in the Church
only at the expense of spiritual life and of all that the Church of God
holds dear.

In illustration of his theme he instances among other facts
the case of a certain congregation which was ' both vigorous
and enthusiastic.'

It had ignored our methods of Church discipline, and had tried a
serious case of irregularity in the Church by the panchayat (council) of
the caste whence they had hailed, and to which they still believed
themselves to be bound by indissoluble bonds. It seemed to them of
little consequence that some of the members of the panchayat were
heathen.

1 Richter, op. cit., p. 171.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 141

This instance entirely bears out our contention previously
made. The moral sanction is found in the decisions of the
social group within which a man may be born. Neither the
rules of the Church nor the laws of God take precedence of the
judgement of the caste, and it is indeed a sinister omen to find
even a single instance of this principle within the pale of the
Church. Dr. Jones went on to speak of the divisive and
exclusive tendency of caste, and of its operation in matters
of dining together and of intermarriages, and he claimed that
its restrictions in such matters destroy the basis of true
fraternity. It may be urged that a principle of social selection
appears wherever men propose to share a meal with their
neighbours or consent to the marriage of their children. Such
a principle is not unknown in countries where caste — properly
so called — is unknown, and where Christianity is the commonly
accepted religion ; but in India, where marriage and the par
taking of food have been from time immemorial associated
with caste and regulated by its ordinances, it is perilous for
the Church to allow its observance. To do so would be inter
preted as a concession to the principle inherent in caste, and
when admitted in these more social phases, other and far
more serious abuses would creep in to destroy what is essential
in the Christian religion. Doubtless when caste is as obsolete
in India as Druidism is in England the lady of the house will
choose the guests she invites to dinner, and the father of the
family will be anxious that his daughter should marry a man
of congenial tastes and similar intellectual interests; but that
time has not come yet to India, and as an educative process it
is better that all the barriers should be thrown down until
men have learned that such barriers are merely conventional,
that they have no Divine sanction attached to them, and that
for good and proper reasons they may be ignored, since there
is one God and Father of all men ; since brotherhood in Christ
transcends all racial and social boundaries ; and, chiefest of
all, since the individual conscience can never be put in com
mission, but remains personal to the man himself, who is to
find the laws that govern his conduct, not in a communistic
system of morality, but in the eternal righteousness of God
reflected in his own moral consciousness.

Following upon this decision of the leaders of the Church in
India the number of conversions from caste Hindus became

I42 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

smaller in proportion than it was at first, and some have
thought it necessary to warn the Missionaries against ' the
proletariatizing of the Christian Church/ That fear, how
ever, scarcely exists to-day, and as the Christian community
rises in intelligence, in mental culture, and in spiritual
power, it may be expected to pass entirely away. But
even if it did not do so the Church has no option in the
matter. It is bound to accept that ' in Christ there is neither
barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free,' and the Christian com
munity in India presents to Hindus the ideal of a new social
type of manhood, which embraces all distinctions and refines
whatever elements of good they possess.

The Methodist Mission in India had, in common with those
of other Societies, a direct relation to the political power, and
during the difficult days of its inception that relation was far
from happy. The political situation in India at the time of
Dr. Coke's voyage to the East was wholly unfavourable to
missionary enterprise. The Charter given by Queen Elizabeth
in 1600 to ' the Governor and Company of merchants of London
trading into the East Indies ' conferred upon its recipients, not
only a monopoly in trading facilities, but a large measure of
such power as is usually associated with actual government.
Thus it was enacted, and confirmed in subsequent renewals
of the Acts of Charter, that the permission of the Company
must be secured before any British subject could reside in
India. Doubtless this was a privilege granted to the Company
to strengthen their trade monopoly by giving them the power
to exclude other adventurers in commerce, whose transactions
might embarrass them in their commercial and political rela
tions with Hindu rulers and their officers. But it became, in
the hands of those who were concerned solely with the exploit
ing of India's wealth, an instrument which they did not
hesitate to use in keeping out of the country all whom they
might consider to be an impediment in their way. It may be
that there was in the minds of the directors of the Company a
genuine fear that religious propaganda might arouse a serious
resentment among Hindus, but there is at least a suspicion,

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 143

created by the moral habits of many servants of the Company,
that they were likely to be more at ease in their own minds
if those who preached the Christian religion were kept at a
distance. In the first decade of the century the Directors
of the East India Company passed a resolution to the
effect that ' The sending of Christian Missionaries into our
Eastern possessions is the wildest, maddest, most expensive,
and most unwarrantable plan that was ever proposed by a
lunatic enthusiast.'

The traders who went to India did not concern themselves to the
slightest degree with either Christianity or Church. They set up
harems, and in order to win favour in the eyes of their mistresses they
did not hesitate to worship their pagan gods. They spent eighty years
in India before it occurred to them to erect the first Christian church. l

The anti-missionary feeling steadily grew, until it found
expression in acts of open hostility. It is true that in the
Charter of 1698 a clause was inserted to the effect that the
Company expected its chaplains to acquire the use of the
vernacular, ' the better to enable them to instruct the Gentoos
that shall be the servants or the slaves of the same Company,'
but this clause was generally ignored. The one gleam of
light in the eighteenth century was to be found in the Swedish
Missionary, John Kiernander, but he died in 1786. There
was no one to pick up the torch he then laid down, and when
Carey arrived in Calcutta seven years afterwards all traces
of his work had disappeared, and the Company had decided
to forbid the preaching of the Gospel within the territories
over which it had acquired control. Thus William Carey was
obliged to reside in Serampore, a Danish colony three miles
north of Calcutta. There, in association with his scarcely
less honoured coadjutors, Marshman and Ward, he laid the
foundation of missionary enterprise in India for all time.

The trade monopoly of the Company was abrogated in 1813,
and the year is even more memorable as that in which freedom
for all Missionaries to work in India was finally won. Twenty
years before that William Wilberforce had endeavoured to
secure in the renewed Charter a clause which was intended
to secure that freedom. On that occasion the opposing party
had successfully resisted his efforts, but the struggle for the

1 Richter, op. cit.t p. 97.

144 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

abolition of slavery had aroused the conscience of England,
and though the utmost efforts were made to secure for the
Company the power still to exclude the Ministers of the Gospel
of Christ, this time those efforts were defeated, and the following
clause was inserted in the Charter :

Resolved that it is the opinion of this Committee that it is the duty
of this country to promote the interests and happiness of the Native
inhabitants of the British dominions in India, and that measures ought
to be adopted such as may tend to the introduction among them of
useful knowledge and moral improvements. That in furtherance of
the above objects sufficient facilities shall be afforded by law to persons
desirous of going to, or remaining in, India for the purpose of accom
plishing those benevolent designs.

Our readers will not fail to notice that it was in the very year
in which this addition to the Charter was made that Dr. Coke
sailed for India.

The obstructive tendency of the East India Company was
not limited to the exclusion of Missionaries from their territory.
After this restriction had been removed a still more serious
impediment remained in the patronage of idolatry by the
Company. It would seem as though the Company, in their
fear of religious disturbance, was far more sympathetic with
Hindu forms of religion than they were with Christianity, and
their sympathy took the practical form, not only of large
benefactions made by individual officers in their employment,
but also of State subsidies made in favour of heathen temples.
Doubtless it will be said that the Company, in taking over the
administration of provinces, was under obligation to accept
the religious commitments of former rulers ; but the imposition
of the Pilgrim Tax in 1806, in which they reverted to a former
imposition made by Muhammadans, and the fact that by
reimposing it they secured a very considerable financial profit,
throws an unpleasant light upon their general attitude to
religious questions. In 1833, when Lord Glenelg, who was
at that time Minister for India, brought forward his Bill to
break off the connexion between the Company and all idolatrous
practice, it was openly said that the Company stood to lose
an annual income of thirty thousand pounds if the Bill became
law, and that this was too great a price to pay ' in order to
quiet the religious enthusiasts of Exeter Hall.' But the abuse
which that Bill was intended to remove was too serious for it

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 145

to be longer ignored. Officers of the Company were compelled
to be present on festival occasions, when their sense of decency,
to say nothing of their religious convictions, was often out
raged. To those of them who were Christian gentlemen such
duties must have been humiliating in the extreme. Even the
pay of nautch-girls passed through the hands of those who
were, at least nominally, the followers of Christ. That some
of the over-zealous of these officials should openly denounce
Missionaries as the enemies of the Company was to be expected,
and their refusal to accept any Native Christian as eligible
for office under the Company was quite in keeping with their
policy of refusing to have any dealings with professed
Christians. All this, it must be remembered, was the openly
confessed attitude of those whose boast it was that in their
policy they followed the principle of strict religious neutrality.
Time was to bring its own punishment. In the revolution of
1857 those who revolted were Sepoys whose religious feeling
had been so considered that it was held to be a crime to preach
the Gospel to them, and they revolted on a question of caste
in which the Company had shown the most tender solicitude
on their behalf, while many an Englishman owed his life in
those terrible days to some Native Christian who had been
considered unfit to take the humblest part in either the civil
or the military administration of the Company.
^ It will be easily understood, then, that the attitude of the
Company towards Missionaries and their enterprise did not
conduce to the success of the latter. To the Hindu of a hun
dred years ago the smile or the frown of the ruler was a very
serious matter, and he was all the more unlikely to accept as
authoritative the teaching of those whom he knew to be under
the displeasure of the Sirkar. Nor was he likely to accept
the religion which they taught when he saw that Englishmen
in high authority seemed to be far more in favour of that which
he himself professed. Many a Missionary was met in those
days by the argument that idolatry could not be wrong be
cause the Government supported its ritual and financed its
temples. In a letter from the Rev. G. U. Pope the writer says :

The Natives say, ' Our idolatry, as you call it, cannot be so utterly
abominable as you tell us ; for your Government support it. In going
about talking and giving books against this religion you are opposing
your own Government.'

146 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

If the progress of Christianity in India during the first half of
the nineteenth century has been slow, it must be confessed
that any progress at all was in despite of the East India
Company.

In 1828 Lord William Bentinck was appointed Governor-
General of India, and under his wise and able administration
great reforms were brought forward. Chief among these was
the abolition of Sati.1 Lord William Bentinck made it illegal
to take any part in such an act, and threatened all who might
participate with the penalty of death. Infanticide, and the
custom of exposing the dying on the banks of the Ganges,
were also forbidden, as were hook-swinging and the practice
of devotees flinging themselves under the car of Jagannath.
These reforms seemed to members of the Company likely to
lead to serious trouble, and were opposed by them, but Ben
tinck was firm in carrying out reforms which were in accord with
humane feeling, and the Hindus quietly accepted what the best
of them felt to be right and proper. Among the terms of Lord
Glenelg's Bill, to which we have already referred, were those
which abolished the Pilgrim Tax and enacted that no revenue
from religious offerings was to be received, while the Company
was, in addition, to abstain from all interference with priests
of the temples. The management of all affairs connected
with these was to be left to the Brahmans, who arranged for
their processions and other ceremonies. This seemed so
subversive an ordinance that no attempt was made to enforce
it until 1840, when public opinion compelled its observance,
and in the course of time the scandal of a Christian Government
participating in idolatrous ceremonies, and in customs which
were often flagrantly immoral, came to an end. Bentinck
had also taken an important step in the direction of securing
the status of those who made any change in their profession
of religion, but his enactment held good only in Bengal. In
1850 Lord Dalhousie applied that rule to all territories under
the Company's jurisdiction, and its importance is so great that
the chief clause may well appear in our record :

So much of any law or usage now in force within the territories
subject to the government of the East India Company, as inflicts on any

1 The word ' Sail ' really means ' a virtuous woman,' and was properly used to
describe the widow who accepted death on the funeral pyre of her husband. It has
by common usage come to mean the act of self-immolation.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 147

person forfeiture of rights or property, by reason of his or her renouncing,
or having been excluded from, the communion of any religion, shall
cease to be enforced as law in the courts of the East India Company,
and in the courts established by Royal Charter within the said territories.

Here again it was the force of public opinion which compelled
the Company to take this action. In fact, it cannot claim to
have instituted any reform in religion or morality on its own
initiative.

It was one thing, however, to have won a victory in the
courts of law ; it was another to secure justice in administration.
The animus of the Company is shown in a dispatch from its
directors after the Bill of Lord Glenelg had become law in
1833. The dispatch was dated February 28, 1833 :

Much caution and many gradations may be necessary in acting on
the conclusions at which we have arrived. Among other concomitant
measures, such explanations should be given to the Natives as shall
satisfy them that, so far from abandoning the principles of a just
toleration, the British Government is resolved to apply them with more
scrupulous accuracy than ever ; and that this proceeding is, in truth,
no more than a recurrence to that state of real neutrality from which
we ought never to have departed.

' Caution and many gradations ' gave abundant scope to those
who were bent on evasion, and the result is to be seen in that
the Wesleyan Missionary Committee found it necessary to
address a petition to both Houses of Parliament praying that
an end should be put to practices which had already been
forbidden by law. This was in 1858, when the civilized world
had been shocked by the events of the mutiny of the preceding
year. The Committee rightly claimed that while the
administration of a company might be regarded as a matter
private to themselves, and without implication of the nation,
yet now that the government of India had passed to the Crown
any injustice or malpractice became a different matter,
and the Ministers of the British Government were directly
responsible for such.

There is ample evidence that the Committee were justified
in calling attention to such evasions. At the time of the Mutiny
—twenty-four years, be it remembered, after Lord Glenelg
had brought forward his Bill — a sum of money exceeding

148 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

eighty-seven thousand pounds was being paid annually to
temples in the Madras Presidency alone. In the matter of
the disabilities of Native Christians a letter from the Political
Commissioner in the Panjab which appeared in The Times
of January i, 1858, may be cited. The writer says :

The Native Christians have, as a body, been set aside. I know not
one in the Panjab (to our disgrace be it said) in any employment under
Government. A proposition to employ them in the public service,
six months ago, would have been received with coldness, and would
not have been complied with.

Most significant of all, when the Church Missionary Society
had made an arrangement with the authorities in Bengal for
giving instruction to the Santals, and the scheme had been
sanctioned by the Governor-General, a dispatch, dated July 22,
1&57> was sent out disallowing the whole proceeding, and
directing that a new scheme should be ' prepared for affording
to the inhabitants of the Santal district the means of education
through the agency of Government officers, who must be
strictly required to abstain from any attempt to introduce
religious subjects in any form.'

Such directions throw a strong light upon the general
attitude of the Company towards missionary work, and reveal
an interpretation of ' neutrality ' which does it infinite discredit.
The time was ripe for the removal of such an administration,
and it passed out of existence in the cataclysm of the Mutiny,
destroyed by the very persons whom it had so unrighteously
favoured.

But even when the British Government assumed full and
direct control of administration the balance continued to be
heavily weighted against the Christian Missionary. Apparently
the accepted interpretation of ' neutrality ' was that where
Hinduism and Christianity were in conflict no favour was to
be shown to the latter, but the utmost possible concession was
to be made to the former. A test case arose in the Mysore
District during the 'nineties. In 1893 a Hindu was baptized,
and immediately after his wife and children were removed by
his relatives. A suit for the recovery of his children failed on
the ground that the plaintiff, having become a Christian, had
thereby lost all civil rights. Apparently the law of 1850, a
clause of which we have already quoted in full, did not hold

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

149

good in Native States. Missionaries in Mysore, Travancore,
and Cochin at once took action in the matter. In Mysore
the case was brought before the Council of Regency, and it was
asked that British law relating to such cases might be intro
duced into the legislature of the State. The Council was
inclined to concede the point that in the matter of property a
convert should retain his rights of whatever kind, including
those of inheritance and partition, but in such a matter as the
guardianship of children under age he should not do so, lest
the right of the convert should become the wrong of others.
Legislation to this effect was delayed, and in 1896 a joint
memorial was sent by the Secretaries of the C.M.S., the L.M.S.,
and the W.M.S. in England asking for the intervention of the
supreme Government with a view to securing the introduction
in Native States of a law analogous to that of 1850. Mean
time the Prime Minister of Travancore, a Brahman, had
expressed the judgement that there was no special grievance,
as converts in that State were drawn from classes owning little
or no property. The Viceroy in his reply to the memorialists
repeated this extraordinary statement from Travancore, and
concluded that ' it appears incontestable that the proposed
legislation, while it would be unpopular, and might become
a source of trouble, would fail to benefit those in whose interests
it was designed.' The Government therefore refused to pursue
the matter. This judgement was not creditable to the Govern
ment. It was evidently based upon the fear of ' trouble,'
and the Indian Administration has always been apprehensive
of disturbance arising from its dealing with questions of religion.
But even though due regard be paid to this fear, what are we
to say of the position taken up that the converts of the future
would continue to be drawn from the Pariah community, and
that these had no property ? Even if a man's possessions
be of the humblest, he is nevertheless entitled to the justice
which ensures a proper respect being paid to his rights. The
Government of Mysore, always in the van of progressive reform,
was, as we have seen, prepared to make at least some adjust
ment in such cases, but after this viceregal declaration it
naturally took no steps to embody in an Act the decision at
which it had arrived.

In judging, then, of the progress made by the Christian
Church in India, the reader must keep steadily in mind that

150 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

from the first the Missionaries found serious obstacles placed in
their path by those who governed the country, and that the
disabilities of converts were such as to deter many from a con
fession of Christ and from entering into the fellowship of His
Church.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

The Preaching of the Gospel — Educational Missions — Industrial
Schools — Literature and the Press — The Ministry of Healing — The
Training of the Ministry.

(i.) THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL

IN this chapter it is proposed to deal with the means used by
Methodist Missionaries in all the Districts of India for the
furtherance of the Gospel of Christ. These will be discussed
more from the point of view of their character and limitation
than from that of the order in which they came into operation.
First and foremost stands the preaching of that Gospel in the
streets of the city, under the village tree, where the congrega
tion may consist of half a dozen men, or in the vicinity of some
popular temple on days of festival, when many thousands
may be assembled. As the years passed it was found as a
matter of experience that preaching was more successful when
it was attempted in a room, and at regular intervals. The
distractions of the street are too many to allow for the quiet
presentation of Christian truth, and opposition may be dealt
with far more effectually within a building than where a great
crowd is swayed by some passionate outburst or some repartee
that is effective in moving the hearers to laughter or contempt.
In some places in the Haidarabad District street-preaching
led to an outbreak of rioting on the part of more turbulent
Muhammadans, and the service in the lighted room was found
to be a necessity if the Gospel was to be openly proclaimed.
This method of preaching at a fixed time and place offered an
opportunity for thoughtful persons and inquirers to attend
services which they knew would be held, and it allowed the
Preacher an opportunity of identifying regular attendants,
and of getting into touch with those whose attention had been

152 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

roused and whose interest had been quickened. W. O. Simp
son was the first to introduce this method of preaching, and it
is now commonly adopted wherever it is possible to do so. At
the same time preaching in the open air is by no means dis
carded. When the Missionary visits the Parcheris of the
Panchamas, or goes on tour in village districts, or on occasions
of religious festival, he still makes his public proclamation of
the Gospel. The ' pulpit ' of Mr. Elliott in the market-place
of Fyzabad was an ideal arrangement, but it has hitherto been
unique as a provision for preaching in public. Other methods
of bringing Christ before the attention of the people of India
are to be found in the use of the magic lantern and in a musical
rendering of the story of Jesus. This last method is of quite
recent adoption, and there is much to be said for it. Hindus
are fond of music, and their own literature is most often put
before the people in some form or other of musical recitation
to which men will listen for hours. The formal sermon is
exotic ; this method is indigenous to India.

Public preaching has without question been fruitful in the
service of Christ, but its effect has been seen rather in the
awakening of interest than in the immediate conversion of
sinners. Indeed, when we consider the fruit of Pantheistic
teaching in the decay of all idea of personal responsibility
for actions performed, it is difficult to imagine the sudden
awakening in a hearer of a sense of sin and an immediate
surrender to Him who has power to forgive sin. Preaching,
therefore, requires as its necessary sequel a measure of personal
intercourse with those who may have felt the power of the
truth proclaimed, and often protracted conversations with
those whose minds are too much clouded over by former habits
of thought for them to yield a ready assent to the message of
salvation.

When the assent has been given there remains the supreme
difficulty of bringing the inquirer to that point of courage
which will enable him to take the decisive step which proclaims
him Christ's servant and soldier to his life's end. For this
endless patience and sincere sympathy are absolutely necessary.
These may be forthcoming, but what is often more difficult
for the Missionary to secure is the leisure which will allow of
this often protracted fellowship and intercourse. Thus it has
most often been the case that the Indian Minister or the

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 153

Catechist is the medium through which the Hindu passes
from the position of an inquirer to that of a convert.

(ii.) MISSIONARY EDUCATION

In the scheme of missionary organization the second place
is held by education. In every District the first step taken by
the pioneer Missionary was to open a school. Doubtless in
earliest days it was thought that the conversion of children
in India might be as confidently expected as in England, but
with the motive of the propagandist there also went that of
the philanthropist, and the bringing of light to the darkened
mind was held to justify the existence of the school. It was
soon discovered that under the operation of caste the baptism
of children under age was impossible, and though the impres
sion of Christian truth upon the mind of a child has led to
many a true conversion in later years, immediate results such
as were first expected did not appear. But there was another
feature of the Mission school which made it less effective as
an evangelizing agency. The teaching staff was of necessity
non-Christian, and until all teachers in a school are distinctly
the followers of Christ the full value of such schools from an
evangelistic point of view will be so much the less. Such
schools, however, brought light where there was darkness,
and Christian truth has everything to gain from the coming
of light. They also introduced into the community the
leavening influence of Christianity, and when the full results
of this appear it will be seen that the harvest reaped through
the village school has fully justified its existence. All the
Mission Districts in India have developed this system of
elementary education, and among them the Mysore Mission
has been pre-eminent in this particular. In that District
the Reports for the centenary year show that there were more
than ten thousand pupils in elementary schools, as against
four thousand eight hundred in the Madras District, and
about the same number in the Negapatam and Haidarabad
Districts. In the Districts of North India the numbers were
considerably less.

When we come to the matter of secondary or higher educa
tion we enter at once upon debatable ground. So severe has
been the controversy which has divided Missionaries on this
item in their scheme of missionary work that it has obscured

154 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

altogether the fact that all Missionaries responsible for elemen
tary schools are engaged in educational work, and the phrase
' educational Missionary ' has become restricted in its applica
tion, and describes the Missionary who finds his sphere of
labour in the high school or the college. It is he who represents
education, while his colleague, who may have a dozen
elementary schools under his care, is held to represent
evangelism. A false antithesis was at once set up. For the
Missionary in the college is not less an evangelist than his
colleague whose work lies in the village. Where he differs
he may justly claim that the evangelistic opportunity is
greater in his case than in the other. His congregation is
the same morning by morning. He gains in continuity of
effort. His congregation is attached to him by bonds of
constantly repeated intercourse, and very often those bonds
are as close and as intimate as bonds of affection may be.
Those to whom his ministry of the word is given are drawn
from social strata, in which the habit of thought on the great
elements of truth is a matter of custom and heredity, and the
class to which they belong is not reached by the ordinary
method of public preaching. It might be supposed that,
having said as much as this, we need say no more in presenting
the case for higher education in India. But the question
of its value is still a matter of discussion, and perhaps there
is no form of missionary enterprise which more sharply divides
both the men on the field and the Societies they represent.
It is not our purpose to discuss the general question in these
pages, but rather to indicate the motives which led Methodist
Missionaries to range themselves on the one side or the other.
They may well be represented by two men, each of whom
served in Madras during the 'fifties, and each of whom in his
own sphere was most successful.

Thomas Cryer was an ardent advocate of preaching as
against teaching. He looked upon the former as ' the especial
glory of Methodism/ and he held that the great need of
Missions in India was itinerant evangelism. He did not
disparage education in itself ; on the contrary, he considered
that it might well be made ' subservient to the universal
diffusion of saving knowledge.' He was really driven to take
up a somewhat exclusive position because of two outstanding
features of the earlier operations of the Methodist Church

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 155

in India. The former of these was the insufficiency of the
missionary staff. The home Church was slow in sending men
into the field. Even where two men were appointed to one
station — and that ideal was far from being commonly realized —
yet if one of the two was engaged in educational work he
would be unable to take his turn in itinerating, and the burden
of the latter was too great for one man to carry it without
relief. Cryer would have had both men alternately on tour
in the villages surrounding the central station. He assumed
that both would be qualified for preaching in the vernacular
and for teaching.

The second fact which accounts for his position was one
of finance. Educational work entailed a considerable expend
iture in ' plant.' School buildings, and the apparatus required,
were costly, and the provision of an adequate staff meant a
heavy item of expenditure under the head of ' Salaries.'
But the Missionary Committee in London was ' paring down
the annual grant to its very core.' How could provision be
made under such circumstances for the costly work of educa
tion ? W. O. Simpson, on the other hand, though a most
efficient preacher in the vernacular of the District, had found
his greater harvest in the school. He never found such fruit
to his ministry of preaching as he did when he led his four
students to Christ, l and it is said that a Missionary of the
C.M.S. in Tinnevelly expressed an opinion that the conversion
of those caste Hindus in the province of Tanjore was of greater
significance for the Christianization of India than that of a
whole village of Shamans in Tinnevelly.2

The whole controversy resolves itself into the question
whether the appeal of the Gospel is to be presented to the
higher social classes of India as well as to the lower, and with
reference to this the Christian Church has now made up its
mind. If the higher and more influential castes are to see
Jesus, if their thought is to be leavened by Christian truth,
if the ideals of those who will have so much to do with the
shaping of the national life of India in the future are to be
inspired and formed by Christ, the Mission school and college
will remain, as they are at present, not the least effective of
the weapons of our warfare.

There is another reason for their continuance which did not

1 See p. 221. * Life of W. O. Simpson, p. 170.

156 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

appear in those early days, but which the development of the
Christian Church has made decisive. The youth of that
Church is now sufficiently numerous and sufficiently advanced
to render some provision for its higher education imperative.
If that youth is to be retained to add grace and strength to
the Church it must be kept under Christian influence during
the whole course of its intellectual training. To relegate it
to the religiously colourless education of Government establish
ments^ — and a stronger word than ' colourless ' may in many
instances be justly used — is to run the risk of finding the very
flower and promise of the Church agnostic, or indifferent to
the vital matters of faith and conduct. There is yet another
point to be made, and it is one which has compelled those
Missionaries who have rejoiced over large accessions from
non-caste classes to add higher education to their agencies,
though in the first flush of their success they had left it alone.
When the question of recruiting an indigenous Ministry
becomes acute, it has been found that the supply of trained
minds is most readily forthcoming where the system of mis
sionary education is something more than elementary. Thus
in Haidarabad, where for many years higher education was in
abevance, it became necessary to provide an instalment of
this. The value of the Bankura College to the Santal Mission
is certain to increase as the evangelizing of that interesting
people develops, and, now that large accessions are reported
from the Negapatam and Trichinopoly District, the splendidly
built ' Findlay College ' at Manargudi becomes an asset of
no mean order to that District.

The Mysore District has from the first given to education a
prominent place among the agencies employed, and the results
are to be seen in the remarkable leavening of social and political
life in that State by Christian ideals. 1 But the Mysore Synod
has not sought, up to the Centenary year, to raise its educa
tional agency to a higher grade than that of the high school.
Its reluctance to do this has been due to the unwillingness of
Missionaries to embark upon an extension of work unless a
full provision for that extension was in sight. To raise the
two schools in that province to the grade of a college would
mean at least the doubling of the European staff at present
engaged in educational work, and an expensive addition to the

. 308.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 157

buildings already erected. The Synod has therefore con
tented itself with the two schools efficiently worked rather
than attempt the experiment of a college insufficiently housed
and staffed. In the Districts of Lucknow and Benares and
Burma higher education is still in the early period of its develop
ment. In Madras the provision made in this particular is
abundant. Not only does the Wesley College offer educa
tional advantages to the youth of the Church, but there is in
addition the splendidly equipped ' Christian College/ in which
the Methodist Church has been represented on the staff since
the year 1878. In addition to these the Triplicane Institute,
the inception of which will be found described on page 238,
affords a priceless opportunity for personal intercourse between
the Missionary and the Hindu student, an intercourse which
can be more intimate and continuous than when it is limited to
the work done in a class-room. For there must be no mistake
upon this point ; the whole effectiveness of such work from a
missionary point of view is a matter of personality. It is
from the impact of a truly Christian personality upon that of
the Hindu that Christ is ' formed ' in him.

The education of girls and women was from the first the
object of desire on the part of Missionaries in India, for no
Christian could contemplate the status of womanhood as
ordained in the Shastras, and enforced by custom, without
sympathy. Chivalrous feeling and Christian compassion
alike demanded their emancipation from the selfish tyranny
that ruled their lives, and which was not less selfish or less
tyrannous because its victims had in the course of centuries
learned to accept it as something foreordained. Knowing
nothing of an alternative life, they could do nothing but accept.
The Women's Auxiliary, in taking up work among women
in India, did at least three things. They obeyed a true instinct
of Christian womanhood as they knew it in themselves ; they
lifted a heavy burden from the heart of Missionaries — the
burden entailed by living in daily contemplation of a world of
suffering which they were powerless to relieve — and they brought
into Indian womanhood the priceless gifts of enlightenment
and hope. In the pages that follow this chapter the writer
would acknowledge at once that scant justice has been done
to this work. He can only plead that anything approaching
a record either of the work done or of the women who have done

158 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

it would have entailed an expansion of this History far beyond
the limits laid down for his observance. He would join the
great army of Indian Missionaries, past and present, who
render to the Christian women who have been their fellow
labourers in the Ministry of Christ the fullest measure of
admiration, of reverence, and of gratitude. The work done
has not in its course presented to the historian events or
incidents which he can well record. The age of girls attending
a Mission school precludes the possibility of their being
admitted to the Christian Church by baptism, but that multi
tudes of such girls have seen Jesus, and loved Him, is certain.
Some who in later life have risked everything in confessing
Him have obeyed an impulse first felt in the Mission school,
and all have shared in greater or less degree the enlightened
mind and the wider vision which has redeemed life for them
from the slavery in which their mothers lived and died.

The indirect results of the education of girls in Mission schools
have been very great. They are seen most conspicuously in
the Native State of Mysore. Here Hindus were moved to
imitate the Missionaries, in defiance of Shastraic injunctions,
by establishing a school, since raised to the status of a college,
in Mysore City. That College has been dignified by royal
patronage, and it has been financed as no Mission school can
ever hope to be, but its scholars have been drawn from the
highest castes, and of course the element of Christian teaching
has been rigorously excluded. Yet all admission of light to
the mind may be greeted by the Christian as so much to the
good, and every graduate from that college becomes one more
agent in bringing about the emancipation of Indian women
from the bondage of the past. In the reforms mentioned
elsewhere1 as indicating the leavening influence of Christianity
in the Mysore State it will be observed that a great proportion
of such reforms has to do with the status of women, and that
this effect should appear is to be attributed to the new ideals of
womanhood first formed in Mysore, when the Missionary sought
to lift the girls of that city into a life of wider outlook and of
increasing freedom. The same may be said of other Districts.
Whatever enrichment may come into a woman's life in India,
as the future unrolls itself, it was first offered in the Name of
Christ.

1 See p. 308.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 159

In the Christian boarding schools for girls the Women's
Auxiliary have had a fuller opportunity, and they have made
a noble use of it. Such schools are to be found in all the Dis
tricts, and they need not be enumerated here. Each is
characterized by some form of industry, and not a few have
developed into first-class training institutions, which send out
every year an increasing number of those indispensable
Christian agents— the trained teachers of girls. From these
schools Christian women have gone out into the current of
Indian life, independent, educated, efficient in service, and
pure in heart. The moral transformation has been complete.
Some have taken high positions as Government Inspectors of
Schools, others have served as doctors and nurses in Mission
and Government hospitals. Others again— and who shall say
whether this is not the highest honour of all ?— have given to
India the vision of a Christian home, in which husband and
wife, in equal honour, freedom, and fidelity, enter into a true
fellowship of heart and mind.1

(iii.) INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

Industrial Missions in India differ from those in Africa inas
much as they rest upon a different basis. In the latter country
they were initiated by Missionaries anxious that the African
should learn the dignity of work. They formed part of the
organization of the Mission on the educational side. In India
they were forced upon Missionaries by reason of the operation
of the caste system. It was not with them a question of
education— though its value in this respect was fully recognized
—so much as a question of livelihood for Christian converts.
When a man became a Christian he was forthwith excluded
from the social group into which he was born, and as caste
is a system of trade-guilds as well as of social distinctions,
that carried with it exclusion from the industry of his group,'
whatever might be the form of that industry. He became
dependent upon the Mission for his daily bread. When con
verts were made by ones and twos it was no great difficulty
to find occupation for such. The Missionaries were in sore
need of teachers in their schools and of Catechists to assist

'The institution of the Women's Christian College in Madras, co-operative be-
devek. me Societles and the Wesleyan Women's Auxiliary, is a post-Centenary

160 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

them as preachers and pastors in the Church. All who were
of any educational standing found ready employment. Those
who showed no aptitude for learning were employed as domestic
servants. Exposed to manifold temptations, these often failed,
and thus helped to swell the chorus of those who were only too
ready to decry or disparage the results of the work of the Church
in India. But at best such forms of occupation, adopted to
meet the necessities imposed upon them by the rules of caste,
carried with them a certain amount of peril. Their tendency
was to create a Church dependent upon the Mission both
intellectually and financially. The Church threatened to be
exotic, not indigenous to the country, and the Christian com
munity seemed likely to become one more caste ; a cyst in the
organism, not a functioning part of the general life of India.
This peril was clearly seen from the first, but the ostracism of
caste was so complete and so unrelaxing, that Missionaries
were compelled to make some provision for their converts,
the only alternative was to see them starve or drift away into
some form of service which checked and then destroyed the
moral life only beginning to be formed in them.

The question how to secure for the Indian Church a worthy
position in the social and economic life of India was always
one of peculiar difficulty ; and when accessions became
numerous, or when, as the result of famine, Missionaries found
themselves in loco parentis to large numbers of orphans, it
became acute. Attempts were made to form agrarian settle
ments, but this accentuated rather than removed the element
of dependence. Areas of sufficient dimensions could be ac
quired only by the Missionary. He thus became the landlord,
and the tenant looked to him for the repairing of his tenement :
when the crops failed in the field he fell back upon the
Missionary for support. An illustration of the difficulty arising
appears in connexion with the Bankura Mission,1 and similar
situations have arisen in connexion with orphanage settlements,
both in the Mysore and the Negapatam Districts. It would seem
as though in this system of founding Christian villages the
only way of securing an independent and virile Church is to
throw the villager upon his own resources, making him the
owner of both his house and his fields. If his previous moral
and religious education has been thoroughly well carried

1 See p. 405.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 161

through, this may be done with no undue amount of
risk, but if the Christian character of the man has never been
established, his fields may soon become waste land and his
house a hovel.

As ' community movements ' became more common it was
found to be by far the best method to allow the converts to
follow their former avocations, to give them the advantage of
becoming acquainted with the use of better implements and
of learning better methods of cultivation — where they had
been tillers of the soil — and to encourage in them the spirit
of thrift and co-operation, so as to secure freedom from undue
financial distress, but leaving them dependent upon their own
exertions for the maintenance of themselves and their families.
No room should be left for the critic of Missions to speak of
converts being kept on leading-strings, or rendered unfit for the
occupation which came naturally to them. We are not con
cerned with such reproaches except in so far as they may be
translated into the lack of independence and self-reliance, or
as indicating that the Church in India is cut off from the general
life of the country.

The preparation of the youth of the Church for independence
by the teaching of some sort of handicraft presents fewer
difficulties, for it is possible to secure in the process a more
constant pastoral watchfulness over the individual workman,
and when he has become master of his craft he may earn a
sufficient wage to become independent and self-respecting,
thereby proving himself to be a valuable factor in the work of
building up an indigenous Church. Both at Karur, in the
Negapatam District, and at Tumkur, Hassan, and Mysore, in
the Mysore District, such institutions are to be found, the in
stitution at Karur having a department for women and girls,
while in the Mysore District the girls are segregated at Hassan.
These institutions developed out of the orphanages established
during the famine of 1876. In 1889 Mr. J. T. Whittome — ' a
thoroughly capable and efficient workman ' — was sent out
under the Joyful News organization to take charge of the in
dustries of the orphanage at Karur. It was an admirable ap
pointment. For more than five years Mr. Whittome was able
to organize and superintend the work of the industrial school,
and its efficiency was largely due to his energy and ability.
Two years after his arrival it was decided to bring the school

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

into line with Government schemes for the development of
industry. This meant the acceptance of official inspection,
and conformity to Government requirements of efficiency in
the staff, and of good quality in the output of articles made
This has had a double effect. It secured great financial relief
by the earning of increased Government grants— Mr. Whit-
tome's qualifications alone entitled him to receive half of his
salary from the Government ; and the latter were so satisfied
with the work done in the school that considerable orders for
articles required in Government offices were received by the
school. But in addition to this financial advantage the rela
tion to Government ensured the maintenance of a high
standard of work, and this was a most desirable element in
the training given. General education was not neglected, boys
being taught in school classes until they reached the seventh
standard. The greatest attention was given to moral and
religious training. There was one feature of this school in
the 'nineties which showed the trend of events in missionary
work of the kind. Other Societies than our own sent their
boys to be trained here, and even thus early in its history five
different Societies were represented in its inmates.

In 1891 the Director of Public Instruction was so pleased
with the school that he proposed a great enlargement of its
scope. According to this, Government scholarships were to be
given to non-Christian boys in four out of the eight taluks of
the District, and were made tenable while the recipients were
under instruction at Karur. It was acknowledged that the
Mission school had better fitted workshops and a better teach
ing staff than any similar institution in the Madras Presidency,
while the articles it produced were superior to those produced
elsewhere. The proposed enlargement presented one aspect
particularly gratifying to Missionaries, for it meant that non-
Christian boys from other towns and villages in the District
would be brought under direct Christian influence, and this,
it was hoped, meant greater opportunities for the evangelist
when they returned to their homes. Mr. Whittome was fol
lowed in 1897 by Mr. R. A. Stott and in 1903 by Mr. J. W.
Mettam.

In 1904 Mr. Stott, after furlough in England, returned to
take charge of the industrial school at Tumkur. Under his
able management this school also made rapid progress,

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 163

especially in carpentry and cabinet-making. Its articles of
furniture have become known all through the Mysore State,
and the school has become a prosperous institution. When to
this school we add the Mission press in Mysore City, considered
as a school of industry, it will be seen that in these two insti
tutions the Mysore Mission offers to Christian youths an op
portunity of securing an admirable training in one or other of
the two branches of industry. If to the Tumkur establishment
there could be added other departments, so as to vary the
industry taught, a great addition would be given to its value as
a centre of training for the youth of the Church.

The women of this District, too, have excellent oppor
tunities of training. In all the boarding schools for girls some
form or other of industry, such as making articles of apparel or
lace-work, is carried on, and the school at Hassan has already
given its name to woollen caps which are in great demand.
But in addition to these the normal school in Bangalore and
the hospitals in Hassan and Mysore City offer training in
branches of work which make it possible for women to take
up the most honourable form of service, making themselves
independent and doing full justice to all that is womanly in
them. In other Districts the same end is kept steadily in view
in the several boarding schools at present in existence. In those
that are to be found in Madras and Ikkadu, in Secunderabad
and Medak, the training of teachers is carried on with great
success, and much to the relief of the Missions concerned in
educational work. In the last-mentioned Districts, however,
industrial schools for boys have not been carried as far as they
have been in the Negapatam and Mysore Districts.

For the success of such institutions there are at least two
essential conditions. The marked development of the schools
at Karur and Tumkur and of the Mission press in Mysore City
has been due to the appointment as manager of a layman
Missionary, possessing the necessary technical skill and the
distinctive Christian spirit. Not one Missionary in a hundred
will have had the training necessary to justify his being put
in charge of an institution which requires a knowledge of
machinery, and personal skill in applying it and in teaching
its use to others. In addition to such qualifications, consider
able business aptitude is required to take up a commercial
enterprise in which buying and selling may be on a very large

164 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

scale. Missionaries who have attempted such work in the
past have done so only at the expense of time and strength,
which would have been more effectively employed in ministerial
work. The latter has suffered in consequence, and the industry
has often been far from efficient. Both departments gain
immeasurably by the appointment of a capable layman to take
charge of the industrial school.

Yet it should never be forgotten that in the scheme of
missionary organization such work is only a means to an end.
It is fatally easy to regard technical and commercial success
as the end itself. The true end of all missionary enterprise
is the securing a complete and glad obedience to ' the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus ' ; it is the creation in India
of a Christian Church, the members of which ' adorn the doctrine
of God our Saviour in all things.' The moral and spiritual
character of the work is its first essential, and no skill acquired
by the students or financial prosperity secured in the enterprise
can take its place. Where the controlling and directing mind
is permeated by the spirit of Christ such institutions are
invaluable to the Church ; where it is not, they become the
fertile seed-beds of noxious growths which imperil the Church
itself.

The same conditions hold good for the training of girls. The
contribution made by the Women's Auxiliary in this particular
can never be fully appraised. Into all the Districts of India
they have sent women of great ability to take charge of this
work. In administration, in teaching, and in healing the sick,
they have in instances far too numerous to be mentioned
accomplished a work over which the Church may well rejoice.
Many of them have done so at the cost of ruined health, and
some at the cost of life itself. The alabaster box of precious
ointment has been freely broken in their service of Christ.
The occupations they have taught have been educative in a
sense far beyond that of the production of this or that article.
Their students have lived in close association with Christian
women of fine temper and true devotion, and the resultant
effect can never be measured. Personal cleanliness and
delicacy of feeling have come to them in and through the very
work they had to do. One has only to observe the contrast
between a group of women engaged in making lace and their
own relatives in the Parcheris, almost adjoining the Mission

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 165

compound, to see that whatever the value of the material
output may be, the results of such training in character and
feeling can never be expressed in terms of material wealth.
A Christian nurse or teacher in India often exhibits in herself
the very type of Christian womanhood, and in this there is
to be found the promise of all the future for the Church of
Christ in India.

(iv.) THE TRAINING OF THE MINISTRY

The central purpose of Missionary service is to be found in
the creation of a Christian Ministry indigenous among the
people whom the Church sets out to evangelize. That Ministry
is the nucleus of the life newly formed when Christ is accepted
as Lord and Saviour by any community. From it will come
the directing power and the informing thought of the Church
in India, China, or in any other land which becomes the Mission
field of the parent Church. As power it will direct the energies
of the new communion towards the observance of the law of
Christ, and it will impart vision and effective force to every
form of social and philanthropic enterprise. As thought it
will contribute its racial interpretation of the Christ, until
through ' that which every joint supplieth ' the consummate
interpretation becomes catholic, comprehending the life, not
of any single communion or race, but of the world. The
parent Church will rejoice when it hears of accessions to the
great company of believers, not because its own borders are
thereby enlarged, and certainly it will not pride itself upon
the success of its endeavours. It will regard such accessions
as a means to an end, and not the end itself. The ' far-off
Divine event ' which it labours to attain is the revelation of
its Lord consummated when every nation and tribe and tongue
contributes its own peculiar interpretation of the Christ, ' who
all in all is being fulfilled.' It is through an inspired and
prophetic Ministry indigenous in every race that the Divine
fulfilment will be realized. It is because of this conviction
that success or failure in the training of a Native Ministry in
the different Mission fields of the Methodist Church has been
stressed in the pages of this History. No numerical increase
in membership, no addition to the financial resources of any
local communion, can compare in importance with the forma
tion and the character of the indigenous Ministry.

166 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

When a Christian Church sends forth its Missionaries to
evangelize a people it has to create such a Ministry, and its
work is both destructive and constructive. It does not find,
in the agents whom it may decide to employ, a tabula rasa
upon which it may inscribe its own conception of truth as it
is in Jesus. Notably in Eastern lands the field of human
thought has been overgrown by that which has to be removed.
Philosophies have during the centuries become expressed and
ingrained in habits of peculiar tenacity, and every untutored
villager, though ignorant of the philosophy, has inherited a
view of life which is based upon it. Endless culture is required
before that which is of worth can be disentangled from that
which has choked it and rendered it unfruitful.

On the other hand, Christ comes to these lands as a discovery.
His law cuts right across the line of that which is familiar to
the people, and it has to be set forth in endless iteration before
it can be grasped in its full significance by the non-Christian
mind. Training thus becomes essential to the formation of
the indigenous Ministry. That training is not a matter of
securing the reproduction of dogmas which have been accepted
in Western countries. It is in essentials an insistence upon
' the fact of Christ ' ; but that is not accomplished in a moment,
where all that is contrary to Christ rises up like an armed man
to dispute the new teaching and to destroy the new authority.

In the pages which follow an attempt is made to show the
steps taken to secure ministerial training in the different Dis
tricts of India by the Methodist Church. The story in its
earlier pages is a painful one. A few Missionaries, flung into
the maelstrom of Hinduism, which was drawing all life down
into its dreary depths to drown it there — Missionaries not too
well equipped in themselves, and with an utterly insufficient
support from the Church which had sent them out, units in a
crowd of many millions — how could they hope to grapple with
the work that lay before them ? Naturally they grasped at
every straw that floated within their reach. They accepted
agents who betrayed that which was more precious than life
itself. Harassed by a multitude of conflicting duties, they
had neither time nor energy for training the agents they needed.
They were obliged to use both as teachers and as Catechists
the converts of other Missions, men who in some instances
were mere hirelings, prepared to sell their service to the

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 167

Church that paid them most. Agents of this sort were
not merely unproductive of the results desired, they were too
often a positive evil in the Church. Efforts were made by
individual Missionaries to train their converts for Christian
work, but such efforts were spasmodic, inefficient, and liable
to interruption when the Missionary was absent from the
station ; and they ceased altogether when he returned to
England for furlough. It was not until W. O. Simpson
made the attempt recorded on page 221 that the training of
agents was recognized as a distinct department requiring
suitable apparatus on the material side, and with a Missionary
at its head who made it a definite part of his daily work. After
Simpson's departure the work languished, though from time
to time one or two men would pass into the ranks of Catechists ;
and, if they proved to be of good character and attainment,
were ultimately admitted by ordination into the Indian
Ministry. When W. B. Simpson went to Madurantakam in
1889 he was charged with the duty of taking up this work,
and promising youths were sent to be trained by him. But
the system then followed was still imperfect, inasmuch as the
work was considered to be a parergon — an extra — to be added
to the work of a man who already had more than he could
fully accomplish in other departments.

In the other Districts much the same history is to be found.
Sometimes the honoured title of ' Theological Institution '
appears in the annual Report of the Society, but an examina
tion of the work done and of the students being trained shows
little justification for the use of that title, and if any depletion
of the staff of the District took place its effect was felt most
in the department of training. It was in 1899 that this work
was placed on lines that were likely to lead to the desired
results. In that year it was decided to establish an institution
for the training of all agents whose mother tongue was Tamil.
Students could then be sent to be trained from all the Districts
in South India. It was further resolved to appoint a European
Missionary and an Indian Minister definitely to this work.
For one year the institution was located at St. Thomas' Mount,
but in the following year it was removed to Guindy, six miles
from Madras ; the new station adding to its many advantages
this, that the students in the normal School department were
able to attend classes in the Government College for the training

168 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

of teachers, which was situated in Saidapet, only one mile
away. Hostels were built for both married and unmarried
students, and the first Missionary to be appointed was the
Rev. C. H. Monahan, his colleague being the Rev. John
Rungaswami.

It was felt, however, that further training was necessary
if the Church in India was to have an ordained Ministry
adequate to its need, and in 1910 a United Theological College
was opened in Bangalore to meet the need of Societies working
in India and Ceylon. The significance of this college, not only
for the Methodist Church but for all the Churches represented
in India, can scarcely be exaggerated. Here missionary
organization touches its highest point, and reveals its essential
character. It overleaps the bounds of denominations. Its
staff and its organization unite the Churches instead of dividing
them, while in the character of the teaching given, it points
to the approaching Church of Christ in India, one in spirit and
purpose and yet affording room within itself for the free play
of forces which retain the characteristics of the different
communions and of the different races represented by the
personnel of both staff and students. The London Missionary
Society and the United Free Church of Scotland, the American
Board of Missions, and the American Arcot Mission, are equal
participants with the Wesleyan Missionary Society in the
burden and the honour of its service. The Ministers trained
in its classes come from Bengal and Ceylon, from Burma and
Madras. Their Native languages vary with the races to which
they severally belong, but they are made one ' in all utterance
and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was con
firmed in them.' The foundation-stones of the college build
ings were laid by Dr. J. R. Mott and Dr. R. F. Horton,
and they, too, are woven into the symbolism of this consumma
tion of the Church's endeavour to reveal to the many races of
India the Christ ' in whom each several building, fitly framed
together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.' The first
Wesleyan Missionary to be appointed to the staff of the college
was the Rev. W. H. Thorp. The Rev. G. A. F. Senaratna,
the first Wesleyan Minister to complete his course in the college,
was appointed to the Sinhalese branch of the City Mission in
Colombo.

So far as the South and Central Indian Districts are

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 169

concerned, the arrangements made for graduation in the Indian
Ministry are now as complete as possible. A student, after
passing through either the vernacular or the English school
in his own District, is sent to the training centre of his District,
which may be Guindy, or Medak, or Tumkur, according as his
language is Tamil, or Telugu, or Kanarese. In these institu
tions the training is given in the vernacular, and the student
may be trained either for the work of a teacher or for that of
an evangelist. After passing out of the seminary he may go
at once into the work carried on in his District, or if he possess
the necessary gifts and grace he may proceed as a candidate
for the ordained Ministry to the Bangalore College, where
teaching is given in English. An evangelist, however, who
gives proof that he possesses ' gifts, grace, and fruit/ may
enter that Ministry on the recommendation of his Synod
without passing through a college course ; for the Church is
far from excluding from its Ministry those who may be unable
to speak in English. The student is thus under immediate
pastoral supervision and direction for a lengthened period, and
it has often happened that what was only a proposed profession
has become to him in the course of his training a true vocation.
The sense of sin — a matter of slow growth to the Hindu — has
become deepened, and the experience of forgiveness through
faith in Christ has been followed by the consciousness of a
true adoption into the family of God in and through the gift
of the Holy Spirit.

We have thus indicated the stages through which ministerial
training passes in South India until it culminates in the theo
logical institution in Bangalore. In the Haidarabad District
the preliminary stage is provided for in the Medak Institution,
founded in 1899, an account of which is given on page 346. In
North India and Burma the development of this branch of
missionary work is not as far advanced as it is in South India,
and we have said as much as can be said in the chapters which
deal with the course of events in those Districts up to the
year 1913. At present the Bengali Mission sends its candidates
for the Ministry to the Bangalore College. This is an admirable
arrangement except for the fact of distance and the expense
incurred in travelling. Some more accessible centre for the
North of India is much to be desired on this account. It is
probably through co-operation with other Societies that

i;o THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

adequate provision will be made for the training of Catechists
and teachers within each area.1 An example of this is to be
found in the seminary for evangelists and the normal school
for teachers which have found a home in Tumkur, in the Mysore
District. Here students of the London Missionary Society
are freely admitted, and an Indian professor of that Society is
a member of the teaching staff. This institution is a post-
Centenary development, the seminary having been opened
in 1916. Up to that time such training in the Mysore District
was carried on in Hardwicke College.

(v.) THE MINISTRY OF HEALING

With the one exception of the medical work done at Manargudi
the whole of the ministry of healing in Methodist Districts in
India is accomplished by women and is for women. It is done
under the direction of the Women's Auxiliary, and very nobly
have these Christian women in England responded to the appeal
which came to them from the ' dumb mouths ' of aching
wounds and unutterable suffering. Hospitals have been built
mostly through the generous contribution of individuals,
both British and Indian, but the medical staff is found through
the Auxiliary, and the maintenance of the work is to a great
extent provided from the funds which it administers. Three
of these hospitals are to be found in the Madras District, four
in the Haidarabad District, and two in the Mysore. In addi
tion to these, twelve dispensaries are maintained within the
area covered by Methodist Missions. That the work should
be so largely limited to the service of women is due to the fact
that, except in remote regions, there is a certain amount of
medical work carried on by local governments in India. In
most of the great centres of population large hospitals have
been set up, and the Indian Medical Service is not the least
of the many blessings which have come to India by reason of
the British occupation of the country. But the seclusion of
women in India prevents the use of the general hospital by
the sex, and as a rule women are unwilling to be treated except
by women. The amount of suffering which is endured, and is

1 In recent years the Serampore College has been re-established on co-operative
lines, and is now a Union Institution for North India. The Wesleyan Missionary
Society has not yet, however, been represented on its staff.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 171

actually increased by the unwitting cruelty of ignorant
practitioners, is indescribable, incalculable. We must leave
it at that.

It was not until the 'eighties that any attempt was made to
bring to that suffering the ministry of healing. The first move
in this direction was made in Madras, where Miss Palmer
opened a dispensary. Afterwards, on the obtaining of a
medical diploma, she took charge of the hospital erected by
William Goudie in Ikkadu. In 1885 Miss Ball, who afterwards
became Mrs. Pratt, was sent out to begin medical work in
Haidarabad, and much useful work was done by this lady in
Karim Nagar. But it was the arrival of Miss Posnett and
Miss Harris at Medak in 1896 which gave to this branch of
the work the impetus it has retained in the Haidarabad District.
The extraordinary success attending their efforts led to a
rapid extension of medical work. Hospitals were built, not
only in Medak, but also in Karim Nagar, Ramayanpett, and
Nizamabad. The medical mission became one of the most
potent of influences in bringing the villagers of Haidarabad
to Christ. Of the culmination of this service in the healing
of the leper we have written elsewhere. The circumstances
attending the building of the two hospitals in the Mysore
District will be recorded in another chapter of this
History1 and need not be repeated here. The important work
being done in the hospital of Sarenga, in the Bengal District,
was not begun until the very close of the Centenary year.

Medical work on anything approaching a sufficient scale is a
costly branch of missionary enterprise. Buildings suitable for
such work are necessarily expensive, and modern science has so
vastly increased the appliances required for effective surgery
that large sums must be found for instruments and furniture,
and no small amount must be spent in maintaining the hygienic
condition of a hospital. The expense attending this work
would indeed have been prohibitive but for the fact that this
particular form of Christian service makes an irresistible appeal
to those who recognize its Christ-like character, and have also
that measure of sympathy with suffering humanity which
prompts them to provide for its relief. It is probable that this
particular missionary agency will greatly increase. For the
humanitarian character of Christian service receives to-day an

1See pp. 299, 301.

172 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

ever-increasing emphasis, and it is certain that where human
hearts seem obdurate to the appeal of the Gospel they open
at once when that Gospel comes to them instinct with the
compassion of Him who is ' touched with the feeling of our
infirmities.' It is significant that with the recent realization
of the unlimited field for a ministry of healing on behalf of the
women of the East there should also be a marked increase in
the number of women who are qualified to enter it. When the
first women were appointed to take up this work in India
those who held a medical diploma were few in number, but
every year now adds to the number of those who add to the
surgeon's skill the unerring instinct and the tender sympathy
of a woman.

With this increased supply of qualified doctors a contro
versial question may soon cease to trouble the Missionary.
For a long time, and even now in some cases, he was perplexed
as to whether he should countenance the practice of the healing
art by those who lacked the necessary technical qualification.
On the one hand, he was confronted with suffering that appealed
for relief, and though he did not possess the technical knowledge
which would enable him to treat the case with confidence, yet
it was possible for him to do something which might prove
beneficial, and it was certain that no other help was available.
Common humanity impelled him to do what he could, however
insufficient it might be. On the other hand, he felt that in
his ignorance he might increase rather than diminish the
sufferer's pain, or his attempt might even prove fatal to the
patient. Again, his failure might bring discredit upon the
religion he had been sent to preach. For to the unlettered
Hindu the superiority of Christianity would be proved by the
superior skill of the Christian practitioner. This dilemma re
appears whenever the controversy is taken up again. The way
of escape would seem to lie in the direction of giving to every
Missionary enough training to enable him to render ' first aid,'
and, further, to establish a medical mission in the fields oc
cupied where no such provision exists, so that the Missionary
may have within reach the skill which might be summoned to
his assistance in dealing with serious cases. To carry out such
a policy would entail great expense, but not too great, if the
Christian Church be permeated with the spirit of its Lord.

No Missionary would be content to serve in a hospital unless

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 173

the witness to Jesus were prominent in its administration.
It is not enough that the evangelical appeal in a hospital be
made by some one other than the doctor in charge, and it would
be better that some part of the heavy daily demand remained
unmet, if thereby the doctor could be associated directly with
the presentation of Christ made to those who await her atten
tion and care. For while the Mission hospital is purely philan
thropic in its aim, it offers its ministry in the name of Christ,
and it is all the more likely to accomplish its purpose when that
Name is fully honoured.

The women who have taken up this service have within the
comparatively few years that have passed since its inception
established a tradition of skill, of fidelity, and of Christian
love. Their names are written in records that far transcend
our human annals, and are cherished in grateful and loving
remembrance by those to whom they have been true Ministers
of Jesus Christ.

(vi.) LITERATURE AND THE PRESS

The production of Christian literature as a means of fur
thering the Christian faith has not been so fully developed by
Methodist Missions in India as it deserves. The Mission press
in Mysore City is the solitary example of a first-class institution
of this kind in the Indian field. The cause of this comparative
neglect is composite. On the one hand, the missionary staff
in the several Districts has always been undermanned, and
work of this kind calls for men of special qualification who can
be set apart entirely from evangelistic or administrative work.
Too many attempts made have failed because this department
has been added to the work of a Missionary already sufficiently
occupied. For want of both men and means for this branch
of the work the Missionaries turned to the very efficient help
forthcoming from auxiliary Societies. In the British and
Foreign Bible Society, the Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge, and the Christian Literature Society,
Missionaries have found allies as generous as they have been
efficient. No words could exaggerate the part played by these
Societies in the evangelization of India. Without their assist
ance it is difficult to see how Missionaries could have faced the
problem which confronted them in India.

Yet where a Mission is able to maintain a press of its own,

174 THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE

and to secure an output which both in technique and in teach
ing contributes to the life of the immediate community, the
gain is immeasurable. To the local Church it becomes an
industrial agency of great value in training a proportion of its
youth, and it enables the Church to produce literature specially
adapted to the needs of its members. Such literature might
be too limited in the area within which it would be of service,
and too ephemeral in character for it to become a charge upon
a Society universal in its range, and yet its value to Christian
folk struggling into intellectual life may be very great indeed.
Examples of this kind of literature may be found in the Mahila
Sakhi and the Bodhaka Bodhini, both of which are published
in Kanarese by the Mysore Press. The former was a monthly
magazine intended for the use of women within the Kanarese
area, and its success as an educational factor may be inferred
from the fact that the Educational Department of the Mysore
State purchased two hundred copies every month for use in
Government schools. This magazine was the production of
women Missionaries, and was as greatly to their credit as it
was efficient among those for whom it was intended. It is a
matter of great regret that owing to the pressure of other work
the publication of this magazine has been — we hope tempor
arily — suspended. The Bodhaka Bodhini was intended for the
use of Catechists and other Christian students, and deals with
questions arising out of a study of the Scriptures. Happily
this is still in existence, and more than two thousand copies were
printed during the year 1922.

Although the Wesleyan Missionary Society has not been
able to set up Mission presses in all the Districts in India, it
has fully recognized the value of this agency, and from time
to time it has ' lent ' to different Societies the service of its
Missionaries. Thus in the Centenary year we find the Rev.
J. Passmore serving as Editorial Secretary in Madras for the
C.L.S. in India and Ceylon, while the Rev. J. S. de Silva
filled a similar position in Ceylon, and the Rev. A. C. Clayton
was Secretary for the Board of Tamil Literature in South India.

The outstanding institution under the direct control of the
Wesleyan Missionary Society is the Mission press in the Mysore
District. The story of its beginning will be found in another
chapter.1 Under the management of such Missionaries as

xSee pp. 209, 288.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE 175

the Revs. Henry Haigh, Henry Gulliford, and E. W. Thompson,
this press soon became known for the good work turned out,
while its influence in the country increased with every year.
But the range of its efficiency was greatly enlarged when Mr.
T. Gould became its manager in 1906. It now executes
orders which come from all parts of India, from Kashmir to
Tinnevelly. As an evangelizing agency its value has been
proved in a large variety of publications, but perhaps its
greatest influence is exerted through the weekly newspaper
known as the Vrittanta Patrike. This has contributed much
towards forming a healthy public opinion, and its value as such
has been frequently acknowledged by the Mysore Government.
Its outlook and tone have been frankly Christian, and every
issue contains an article dealing with some vital question of
ethics or religion. Its weekly circulation is now more than
five thousand, but in the more remote villages a single number
is often read in the hearing of the assembled villagers. Its
influence as a leavening power in the life of the people is
confessedly great.

It will be seen from a perusal of this chapter that practically
every form of Christian enterprise is to be found in the
Methodist Missions in India. Some have been late in coming
into operation, and all are capable of an almost indefinite
extension. We may well rejoice that the new century of the
Church's work begins with an organization so extensive, and
revealing so considerable a measure of efficiency in its working.
The weapons of our warfare are now ready for use. There
remains that without which all organization is but clattering
machinery. It is the effectual working of the Holy Spirit
which makes such weapons ' divinely strong to demolish
fortresses.'1

1 2 Cor. x. 4, Dr. Moffatt's Translation.

Ill

THE FIRST ADVANCE

James Lynch — Madras — Negapatam — Bangalore — A too-extended
Line — A Policy proposed — Melnattam — Reinforcements — Jonathan
Crowther — Joseph Roberts — Ebenezer Jenkins — Beginnings in Mysore —
Thomas Hodson — Gubbi — William Arthur — Characteristics of the
Kanarese People.

JAMES LYNCH was in some respects the most remarkable of the
Missionaries who sailed with Dr. Coke to the East. He does
not seem to have possessed the intellectual gifts of either
Harvard or Clough, and never acquired the use of the Tamil
language,1 but that he commanded the respect and affection
of his brethren is proved by the fact that he was at once chosen
to preside over their councils, and to be their representative
in dealings with the Committee in London. As such he had
to bear the brunt of that Committee's censure in the financial
difficulties which marked the earliest years of the Methodist
Mission in Ceylon, a censure which led to his retirement from
the Mission. The esteem in which he was held by his colleagues
is shown in the warmth with which they resented the strictures
passed by the Secretaries against their leader. His portrait
reveals a personality in which both strength and tenderness
are combined ; there is a winsomeness in his face which accounts
for the affection of his brethren, and an expression of inward
peace and joy which could come only from ' a good conscience,
and faith unfeigned.' He was one who pleaded with men for
reconciliation to God, and he found his opportunity for doing
so among the English-speaking people in both Jaffna and
Madras. Probably his devotion to these was the chief cause of
his never having acquired the use of Tamil.

As we have seen, he was first stationed in Jaffna, but he did

1 He was forty years of age when he came to India, and this would be against his
doing so.

176

THE FIRST ADVANCE 177

not remain there long. In a letter which he wrote to the
Committee dated October 7, 1815, he says :

I have received a letter lately from Madras signed by five serious
persons, who appear to experience the power of religion. They have
received much light into the doctrines of the Gospel by reading Messrs.
Wesley's and Fletcher's works, and most earnestly request one of us
to visit them. At present it is not in our power to do this for want of
sufficient help.

This is the first known reference to Methodists in Madras, and
when we ask how they came to be there we shall at once recall
the fact already recorded of the British soldier who had been
the leader of a small Society in Gibraltar, formed from among
his comrades. Andrew Armour afterwards held a position
of credit under the Government in Ceylon, and we have seen
how gladly he received the first Missionaries in Colombo.
We know that between leaving Gibraltar and appearing in
Colombo he was stationed in Madras, and it is most probable
that the Society of ' serious persons ' was formed by him,
and that after his removal they continued to meet and to
read the works of John Wesley. But it is evident that Madras
as a Mission station had been in the mind of Dr. Coke and of
the Missionary Society from the fact that before leaving
England Harvard had obtained a licence from the East India
Company which gave him permission to preach in India,
and instructions had been given to Harvard to visit Madras.
The Committee was all the more pleased to receive this indica
tion from Lynch that Harvard would find on his arrival in
that city a Society already prepared to receive him. In the
Society's Report for 1816 both Madras and Bombay appear in
the list of stations in ' Asia/ and Harvard is mentioned as
appointed to labour in Madras. The honour of founding the
Methodist Mission in India did not, however, fall to Harvard.
A strong representation from both the Missionaries and the
Government in Ceylon prevailed with the Committee, and he
remained in Ceylon. Lynch was then asked to visit Madras,
and to take what steps seemed necessary in order to regulate
the Society which awaited his coming. On January 23, 1817,
he left Jaffna for Madras. On the way to that city he passed
through Negapatam and preached to certain persons who
were anxious to hear him, so that it was in Negapatam that
the first message delivered by a Methodist Missionary was

178 THE FIRST ADVANCE

preached in India. On the way from Negapatam to Madras
Lynch was the guest of the Royal Danish Mission at Tranque-
bar, and visited the graves of Pliitschau and Ziegenbalg, the
first Danish Missionaries sent out under Frederick IV of
Denmark. Very moving is the story of that visit, and an
extract from Lynch's diary may be allowed as revealing the
spirit of this first Methodist Missionary to India :

This to me was the most interesting place I had seen since I left
England ; here the first Danish Missionaries began and continued their
labours in India ; here they lived, and here they are buried. I visited
their tombs, and could have shed tears had I been alone. I had read
and heard a little of them while yet in Ireland ; little did I then think
that, bearing the same name, I should ever stand at their sepulchres.
I remembered that the reading about these very men of God was the
first cause of stirring up Wesley's mother to much zeal and fortitude
in serving God and instructing her children and others, and that to this
was probably owing the early and continued piety and zeal of her sons,
to whom the world is so much indebted. Indeed, I could scarcely
believe that I stood where they were buried, or that I stood in the same
character of Missionary to the heathen. For a moment I realized them
and Schwartz and Whitefield and Wesley in heaven, as if looking down
upon me approving my motives as a Missionary, but charging me with
unfaithfulness as a son and successor in the Gospel, and with deep re
morse of conscience I withdrew from ground on which I was unworthy
to stand.

The passage from the writings of Susanna Wesley, to which
Lynch refers, is well known, and is quoted by the Rev. E. W.
Thompson. From it we may see a direct line of spiritual
succession — Ziegenbalg ; Susanna Wesley ; John Wesley ;
James Lynch. Now this last, the founder of Methodist
Missions in India, stands by the grave of him whose heroic life
had so much to do with the secret springs of the Evangelical
Revival of the eighteenth century. Mr. Thompson goes on
to say x :

There was to be, however, another link in this chain of causation
which James Lynch did not, and could not, see. William Butler, after
wards a bishop, and the pioneer and founder of the Missions in India of
the American Methodist Episcopal Church, was an Irishman. He
tells us that a Minister whom he knew in Ireland, of the name of James
Lynch, first directed his thoughts to India and kindled the desire to
become a Missionary in his heart. He once said in the Irish Conference,
' James Lynch laid his hands on my youthful head, and from him I

1 The Call of India, p. 131.

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received the missionary spirit.' The Missions of the Methodist
Episcopal Church have met with marvellous success, and during the
last thirty years have gathered in a quarter of a million adherents in
Southern Asia. Ziegenbalg, Wesley, Lynch, Butler — so runs the line
of spiritual ancestry.

On arriving in Madras Lynch was hospitably received by Mr.
Durnford, who proved himself to be a wise and kind friend,
ready at all times to further the interests of the new Mission.
He found that the Society consisted of twelve persons, ' who
have every appearance of being Methodists.' His first duty
was to report his arrival to the Governor of Madras, by whom
he was kindly received ; but some little difficulty arose from
the fact that the Missionary authorized by the Company to
preach was not Lynch, but Harvard. That difficulty was,
however, surmounted, and on March 2, 1817, Lynch preached
the first sermon delivered by a Wesleyan Missionary in Madras.
This was in a ' godown ' in Georgetown, close to the site on
which the English Church now stands. In a room at the back
of this Lynch found both study and bedroom ; his meals he
took with the Durnfords. It was clear that a more suitable
home for the Church was a first necessity. But where was
that home to be ? Not in the old town of Madras. The
narrow, noisy streets forbade it. Lynch ' could not find one
place in the body of the town that my conscience would allow
me to purchase for a missionary family to live in.' Nor could
he look in the direction of Vepery, for there he would be tread
ing on the heels of the L.M.S. and also of the S.P.C.K., and
this was forbidden by the laws of the Comity of Missions,
which even in those remote times were recognized and, as in
this case, obeyed. At last there came an opportunity of
purchasing a property in Royapetta, and Clough and Jackson,
who had come to Madras on a visit, confirmed his opinion of
the suitability of the site. It is pathetic to read of the state
of mind in which Lynch now found himself. ' My mind was
exceedingly exercised. I saw that if I missed it there was not
another place for us unless we would give nearly double the
sum it would cost, but I feared exposing myself to your censure
if I purchased it.' Finally he decided to acquire the property,
and through the kind offices of Mr. Durnford it was purchased,
and became the head quarters of the Madras Mission. In the
course of the years changes took place in house arrangements,

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but the site has remained in the possession of the Methodist
Church. A chaple was built on the site thus acquired, and it
was opened for public worship on March 7, 1819.

Much sympathy with the Wesleyan Mission was shown in
Madras. A Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society was
formed on February I, 1819, and Mr. Frederick Orme, an
Englishman practising as a lawyer in Madras, was its first
Secretary. A systematic method of seeking subscriptions
was adopted, and during the three years which followed the
large sum of ten thousand rupees was forwarded to the General
Treasurers in London. In addition to this, large sums were
obtained for the erection of chapels. It is clear that from the
first the Mission enjoyed the goodwill of the people of Madras.
All this time Lynch had limited his ministry to the English-
speaking part of the community, but in 1820 the Rev. Titus
Close arrived from England to help him, and it was possible
to begin work among those who spoke Tamil. Close was put
in charge of this branch of the work, and Lynch was now able
to minister to English and Eurasian residents at St. Thomas'
Mount and at San Thome, a former Portuguese settlement.

The year 1820 brought reinforcements from England, and
witnessed the beginning of work in two other centres, destined
eventually, and after many vicissitudes of hope and despair,
to become strong centres of Methodist teaching and influence.
Negapatam, the first of these, strongly attracted the Committee
in London. Europeans residing there had given a hearty
welcome to Lynch when he passed through on his way to
Madras, and the offer of a Government grant in return for the
acceptance of a chaplain's duties was a strong inducement in
prospect of expenses which had not been anticipated. But
the Committee also considered that it would speedily become
a base of operations, from which Missionaries might be able
to extend their influence into surrounding tracts of country
in South India. It was also considered desirable as a half-way
house between Jaffna and Madras, and there was no thought
at that time of separating the one District from the other. To
this Station Mr. Squance was removed in September, 1820.
His health in Ceylon had been poor, and it was hoped that the
change would prove to be beneficial. He was not, however,
able to remain in Negapatam more than a few months. In
1822 he returned to England. To fill his place Mr. Close was

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sent from Madras, a move which proved to be most unhappy.
Close had suffered in health while in Madras, but the removal
to Negapatam only served to multiply his troubles. Soon
after his arrival his son died, and his wife was lamed as the
result of a carriage accident. His own health continued to
decline, and when he returned to Madras on his way to England
his only surviving child also died. In spite of the promise
held out at first the beginnings of Methodism in Negapatam
were far from propitious.

The second centre to be occupied was Bangalore. In 1819
Lynch had reported that there was every prospect of ' an
effectual door ' being opened in that city. Letters had been
received from devout Methodist soldiers stationed there and
also in Seringapatam. In 1821 Close visited the two places.
In the latter place he found ' a Society consisting of a few
non-commissioned officers, and about thirty country-born
persons.' These had built a small chapel in the Fort, where
they met for worship and mutual edification. Their one cry
was, ' Can you send us a Missionary ? ' But the Committee
in London had not waited for a report from Close. They had
anticipated any such statement as to possibilities of extension
by sending out the Revs. James Mowat and Elijah Hoole to
begin work in Bangalore. The ship in which they sailed was
struck by lightning when off the coast of Ceylon, and they
barely escaped with their lives. They landed at Trincomalee
in a pitiable condition. Their clothes, books, and other
belongings had been destroyed in the burning ship. After
a short time for recovery from their terrible experience they
went on to Madras, where they arrived in September, 1820,
having left England the previous May. It was decided to
modify the Committee's arrangement to the extent of sending
Hoole to assist Squance in Negapatam, while Mowat went to
Bangalore. When Close was transferred to Negapatam Hoole
joined Lynch in Madras, and when Negapatam was left vacant
by the breakdown in health of Close, Mowat was removed from
Bangalore and sent to Negapatam. The start in Bangalore
was almost as ineffective as that in Negapatam. Subsequent
developments in these two centres will be before us when we
come to consider their several stories, but for the present we
must return to Madras.

The second piece of property acquired by the Methodist

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Mission was situated in a street of Blacktown known as ' Pop-
ham's Broadway.' Here a piece of land, with some old build
ings upon it, was purchased, and the best of the buildings
was adapted for the purpose of public worship. But the
many unpleasantnesses of the street were too near, and the
room was ill- ventilated and generally unsuitable. It was
determined to build so as to lift the chapel above the level
of the surrounding buildings, and thus to secure good ventila
tion and avoid the many discomforts of the ground floor.
This was done, and the chapel was opened on April 25, 1822.
Local subscriptions towards its cost amounted to seven hundred
pounds. Here for many years service was held in English,
and during the memorable years in which the pulpit was
occupied by the Rev. Ebenezer Jenkins the chapel was filled
with an appreciative congregation.

Applications from military centres continued to be received
for Methodist Missionaries to be sent to minister to soldiers
in sore need of spiritual help and guidance. One such came
from Bellary, but the L.M.S. had already begun work in that
town, and the soldiers were advised to accept the ministrations
of the Missionaries of that Society. Another application,
from Trichinopoly, reported a Society of forty members, and
Lynch and Stead, on their way to the Synod, opened in that
town a small chapel which had been erected by the soldiers
and their friends.

A station from which much was hoped was San Thome,
a large village south of Madras on the coast. Here resided a
number of fishermen and persons descended from the Portu
guese who had settled there a hundred years before. One
of the fishermen became a devoted adherent, and after attend
ing the Methodist services at Royapetta persuaded the Mis
sionaries to begin services in the village. He afterwards
induced a gentleman to open his house for services, and after
some little time the house was bought and adapted for worship.
Here services were conducted for nearly thirty years, but
eventually the cause dwindled away, and the property was
sold to the S.P.G.

The work in Madras was still connected with that being
carried on in North Ceylon, the two sections constituting ' The
Tamil District.' During the years 1822-1825 the Missionaries
in Negapatam had the assistance of Mr. John Katts, an

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' Assistant ' from Jaffna, who was well reported of by the
brethren in Ceylon. He spoke both Tamil and Portuguese,
and it was hoped that he would be of great service in India.
After two years in Negapatam he was sent to Madras, but he
became disaffected and inefficient, and in 1826 he returned to
Ceylon, where he continued to serve in our Church until 1842,
when he retired from the Ministry. His name was the first
to appear in the annual Report as that of an ' Assistant Mis
sionary ' in India.

In the Synod of 1821 the question was raised whether the
appointment of Mowat and Hoole to Bangalore should stand
as designated by the Committee, or whether Arcot and Vellore
should be occupied. The general feeling was in favour of the
latter on the ground of their being more easily reached from
Madras, and as the L.M.S. had already appeared in Bangalore
it was thought undesirable to appear to be in competition
with a kindred Society. In view, however, of the Committee's
instructions it was decided that Bangalore should be occupied,
but the Synod attached to their acceptance of this designation
a hope that the Committee would in future allow them to
exercise their own judgement in stationing new arrivals,
since obviously they, being on the spot, were better able to
discern the comparative importance of the different stations,
and much might have happened between the decision of the
Committee and the arrival of the brethren to make a different
appointment desirable. Had the decision been in favour of
Arcot the history of Methodism in South India would have
been very different. The work among the Tamils would
have been consolidated and much fruit might have been
gathered. On the other hand, it is probable that if a beginning
in the Mysore State had been postponed, it would have been
very difficult to make it later, and probably there would have
been no Mission to the Kanarese people. The decision was
critical for Methodist work in India.

In 1824 it could not be said that the Methodist Mission to India
had established itself in that country. The only Missionary
who had acquired the language of the people was Mr. Hoole,
and he had given himself up to evangelistic tours in which he
covered great distances, and was instant in season and out of
season in preaching and in distributing Christian literature.
But such methods were not likely to establish a Church in a

184 THE FIRST ADVANCE

country like India, and in the course of a visit to Seringapatam
Hoole suffered from fever, so that it was thought that many
months would pass before he would be able to do any work
at all. Lynch was on the point of returning to England, and
the Rev. J. F. England, who had recently arrived in Madras,
was obliged to take up so much English work that he could
make little or no progress in acquiring Tamil. There were
only fifteen Tamil Christians in Madras, most if not all of whom
had been Romanists. There was not one in Negapatam.
The membership returned for that year as one hundred and
ninety-eight consisted almost entirely of soldiers, with a
sprinkling of English and Portuguese civilians. There is no
indication that Methodism had taken root in India. The
explanation of this is easy enough. Too many stations had
been occupied by the slender staff sent out to the field, and the
Missionaries had been engrossed in ministering to those who
spoke their own language. We must not forget, in analysing
the causes of this disappointing result of seven years of work,
that the pioneers of the Methodist Church in India were itinerant
preachers. They had gone on their rounds forming ' Societies '
as they went, and finding immediate conversions follow on
their ministry of the word. They came to India with the
expectation that they would follow the same course and enjoy
the same happy experience. They turned eagerly to those to
whom they could preach at once in their mother-tongue. They
had not grasped — and neither had the Committee in London —
the strength or religious significance of Hinduism, the restric
tions imposed upon them by language, or the climatic conditions
under which their work would be done. When their numbers
were so small that they did not suffice for the work of a single
station they eagerly suggested the occupation of Bellary,
Calcutta, and Rangoon. When there were four men in Madras,
one was sent to Bangalore and another to Negapatam. This
policy of dispersion was fatal ; it entailed great expense in
travelling and still greater expense in the multiplication of
Mission houses, chapels, and schools. When the inevitable
breakdown in health occurred, the stations occupied by single
men became derelict, and the property acquired with so much
difficulty fell into disrepair. The Committee seems to have
expected that the work would speedily become self-supporting.
This is the most charitable explanation of the fact that they

THE FIRST ADVANCE 185

did not make provision for the cost of buildings, and were
annoyed when bills were drawn upon them to meet such ex
penses. Their impatience deepened into complaint and then
into censure, and the Missionaries were driven to seek the
necessary funds from those on the spot who were in sympathy
with their efforts. They turned to the English-speaking
population, and exhausted energies, which should have been
given to the study of the language and the teaching of Hindus,
in ministering to their own countrymen. They were thus
diverted from their true objective — the proclamation of Christ
to the Hindus — by the claims of those who were wholly or in
part of their own nationality. That they responded to these
is indeed a fact of which we, their descendants, may well be
proud, but it was not what they had been sent out to do.
When the Church in England failed to provide for both objects
we cannot be vexed or surprised that our pioneers, harassed
by a Committee which protested against their ' extravagance '
and declared that ' their conduct was an outrage on public
confidence,' took the line which brought them some relief from
financial strain and enabled them to erect the buildings
necessary for their work. They listened with sympathy to
pleas from soldiers in the Cantonments scattered over South
India, though they had not begun to approach the Hindus in
Madras. Their energies were still further exhausted by pri
vations which should never have been allowed by the Church.
Titus Close was a Missionary of true devotion. He had made
great efforts to learn Tamil even while distracted by the claims
of English work in Madras. But when he was removed to
Negapatam in broken health, and with his child in a dying
condition, he found the Mission house devoid of furniture ;
and the Chairman, visiting him on his way back from the
Synod, gave him the information that the brethren had agreed
to spend no money whatever on their houses during the coming
year. In the Minutes of the Synod of 1819 we find the brethren
discussing what clothes should be allowed to their brethren
who had newly arrived in view of the fact that the garments
allowed for outfits had been worn out in their four months'
voyage, and their quarterage was insufficient to allow of their
being replaced. Question ii. in their Agenda is answered
thus : ' Let each brother be provided with six calico dresses ' !
It was under such conditions that our fathers set out to

186 THE FIRST ADVANCE

evangelize India. The Missionaries themselves deserve our
sympathy and our reverence. Doubtless they made mistakes.
They had not yet learned the art of living in India so as to
maintain their efficiency for the work they had come to do,
nor did they yet see the true lines on which that work was to be
approached. They were, probably, ignorant of the mysteries
of financial negotiations. But they accepted their position
and made the best of it. They endured privations cheerfully,
and in the spirit peculiar to the British people they held on
doggedly to the ' untenable ' position, until out of defeat they
at last organized victory.

With the return of James Lynch to Ireland in 1824 the
first period of the Methodist Mission to India came to a close.
In the same year the division of the ' Tamil District ' into two
separate Districts of Madras and Jaffna was effected, and Mr.
Carver was transferred from Ceylon to Madras to preside over
the continental section. The term of his chairmanship was
thirteen years (1824-1837), and during that period the mis
sionary situation in Madras was still far from satisfactory.
An effort was made to secure ministerial help from local sources.
Friar Jose Jacinto Martins was a Roman Catholic priest whom
Hoole had met in one of his visits to Seringapatam. Under
the teaching of Mr. Hoole he was led to renounce the Roman
Church, and was received as ' a Missionary on probation ' to
labour among the Portuguese in Madras, with the expectation
that he would soon acquire the use of Tamil. But he made
little or no effort to learn that language, and in 1820 he was
relegated to the position of a ' Supernumerary.' He removed
to Cananore, and there attempted to raise funds for building
a chapel. His death in the same year relieved a situation
which threatened to become embarrassing.

With the arrival from England of the Revs. J. F. England
and T. J. Williamson the prospect improved. Within a year
the latter had been able to deliver his first sermon in Tamil,
but shortly after his wife, a lady of great talent and charm,
died. Williamson was completely broken down by his bereave
ment, and sailed to the Cape of Good Hope that he might
recover, but he died at sea, and two Missionaries of great
promise were thus taken away. Mr. England had been
destined by the Committee for Trincomalee, but with the
consent of the Synod he remained at Madras, as it was feared

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that his health would not stand the climate of Trincomalee.
In 1826 he was sent to Bangalore, where since Mowat's removal
in 1823 no work had been attempted. For departure from
the instructions of the Committee the Madras Synod was
severely censured by the Secretaries in London, and a ' fine '
of £40 was imposed upon Mr. England. This met with a
polite but forceful protest from the Synod that distance from
England made it impossible to wait for letters from the Secre
taries before taking such action as the health of a brother
might make necessary. With reference to the Committee's
resolution reducing Mr. England's allowance for the year by
one-third, the Synod ' respectfully submits that they find
themselves unable to enforce the resolution referred to.' Such
passages between the Administrative Board and the Mis
sionaries on the field only served to accentuate the already
unhappy feeling between them. The staff in Madras was
thus, in spite of the reinforcement sent out, exactly where it
was before. There were two men, of whom Hoole was still
suffering from the effects of fever. Yet extension was still
the order of the day. In 1823 Hoole had visited Poonamalee,
a town about thirteen miles from Madras. There he found a
number of pensioners from the Army, to whom he preached
in a thatched hut erected for the use of Christian Natives. In
1825 a plot of ground was given by the Commandant on the
station for the building of a Methodist chapel, which was
opened in 1827, nearly the whole cost of its erection having
been met from local subscriptions. A devout soldier, Sergeant
Kelly, was the chief agent in securing this chapel, but he died
before it was completed. Another extension in Mission
property took place at St. Thomas' Mount, where a valuable
site was given to the Society by a Mrs. Isaacke. Here, too,
in 1829, a chapel was built, three thousand rupees towards its
cost being raised locally, but the living Church still consisted
of soldiers and persons of mixed nationality. In 1828, before
this chapel was erected, Elijah Hoole returned to England.
As we have stated, he delighted in touring, and as a bachelor
he was better able to do so than other Missionaries. There
were few towns within the triangle Madras-Negapatam-
Bangalore which he had not visited. On one of these tours
he received kindly and courteous attention from the Abbe"
Dubois, who sent him the MS. of his Letters on Christians

i88 THE FIRST ADVANCE

in India for his perusal, together with an expression of regret
' that a young man, such as he had heard me described, should
have devoted himself to so hopeless a task as that of the con
version of the Hindus, and his earnest recommendation to me
to take the earliest opportunity of returning to England.' l
Hoole never returned to India, but he did admirable service
in the missionary cause during the years in which he acted
as one of the Secretaries of the Society (1834-1872). While
he was in India he used his knowledge of Tamil to excellent
effect by undertaking a number of works in that language.
Such were the Tamil version of the Rules of the Society,
Wesley's abridgement of the Anglican Liturgy, and a selection
of Wesley's Hymns and the Second Catechism. Although he
left no Church in India, he did much for the Church of the
future.

The letters which passed between the Madras Synod and
the Secretaries of the Society during the next few years are
letters which it is impossible to read without sadness. The
Missionaries, reduced in number, exhausted by their labours,
and depressed at the failure of their work, wrote piteously
begging for an increase to the staff, pointing out that their
strength was dissipated by their labours among the English-
speaking population, and that while such labours continued
their Mission to the Hindus could never be successful, while
they themselves were distressed by the thought that they were
unable to fulfil their obligations to them, or to the Church
which had sent them to evangelize the heathen. They
frankly confess their failure to acquire the language of the
country, but point out that such failure was inevitable
under the burden of their labours among the others. There
was at first some show of response to this appeal. It was
announced that four Missionaries would be sent out at once,
and this news was received on the field with an outburst of
gratitude which was as pathetic as their appeal. It was the
elation of desperate men in prospect of relief. ' Never since
the formation of the District had they such powerful motives
to bless God and take courage.' But when the four men
arrived it was found that two of them had been sent to begin
a new Mission in Calcutta. That city had been visited by
James Lynch shortly before he left India, and with his

1 Missions in Madras, Mysote, and South India, by Elijah Hoole, p. 156.

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sympathies strongly enlisted on behalf of Europeans in India he
had reported favourably as to the prospect of success in
Calcutta. To that city accordingly the Revs. Thomas Hodson
and Peter Percival were designated. The other two were the
Revs. Samuel Hardey and Thomas Cryer ; but as one of these
was to fill the vacancy caused by Mowat's retirement the
addition to the staff consisted of a single Missionary. They
therefore renewed their appeal. In answer to this they
received a harsh letter complaining that the Missionaries
wrote in general terms and made no definite suggestion, so
that the Committee found it difficult to understand their
meaning, and suggesting that it was for the men on the field
to put forward a detailed scheme, with reasons for its adoption.
Thereupon the Missionaries went over the different stations
one by one, but in the preamble to their letter they declare
that the system followed up to that time was ' founded in
error, has been maintained at enormous expense, has been
the cause of disappointment, and if persisted in will be produc
tive of indelible disgrace.' The recommendations they made
were startling. They were that Madras should be given up
as a centre of work among Tamils, and that one Missionary,
preferably the Chairman, should remain there, to work among
the Europeans, and to undertake the financial administration
of the District. English and Tamil work in Bangalore they
would abandon, as there were Military Chaplains in the Canton
ment, and the Tamils were ' camp followers who were changed
every four years.' If the Committee desired to establish a
Mission in that part of India it should be limited to work
among the Kanarese people. The work at Negapatam
they would retain, since that town was the centre of a
large agricultural district, and at Melnattam, a village twenty-
five miles from Negapatam, a number of Romanists had
joined the Methodist Church. Further, it was proposed
to establish at Negapatam ' a Head Native School ' for
training teachers, catechists, and other agents. Whatever
may be said as to the details, this was at any rate a
definite scheme, and one which the Secretaries had themselves
invited. But when the Synod assembled in 1835 no reply to
the letters of the two preceding Synods was before them.
They did not know whether they were to carry out the scheme
they had proposed. Meantime two of their number had

igo THE FIRST ADVANCE

broken down in health, and were only awaiting permission to
return to England. Their official letter of that year is the
most painful of a long series of painful letters. Their repeated
calls for help had failed to secure any practical relief. In
their bereavements and personal afflictions they had received
not one word of sympathy or encouragement from the Mission
House. The inference they draw is that the Committee
purposed to abandon the Mission to India.

A hundred years separate us from the days in which the
Methodist Mission to India was begun, and in seeking to under
stand the causes of the slow progress made we must confess
that the administration in London left much to be desired.
Doubtless the Committee was seriously embarrassed on finding
that its commitments in the East were so much greater than
it had anticipated, and prior to the sailing of Dr. Coke for
India by far the greater part of missionary subscriptions had
been obtained through his personal influence. The home
organization of the Committee was in only its initial stage,
and demands from other fields for help continued to come in.
Further, they were still more embarrassed by their separation
in time from the field of work. Months elapsed before an
interchange of opinion could pass between them and their
representatives in India. But when all this has been said,
and due allowance made, there are two facts which emerge
from the documents of those years. The first is that the Com
mittee had no definite policy before it for its operations in
India. It followed a system of opportunism, and was too
much influenced by the hope of securing financial support
from the field itself. The second is that the Secretariat was
often harsh and censorious in dealing with the men sent out.
The Missionaries were afraid of taking any step on their own
initiative, lest they should be censured, and they waited in
vain for any definite guidance from the Mission House. Com
mitted to a scheme of work which, they saw, would only hamper
them still more in attempting to evangelize the Hindus, broken
in health and depressed in spirit, with no word of sympathy
from those who directed their efforts, they deserve our com
miseration, rather than our reproach, that the long years
passed, and there was no harvest to bring into the garners of
the Church. In their desperation they renewed their efforts
to secure local ministerial help, and if their acceptance of

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candidates for the Ministry was hasty, and issued in failure,
we can scarcely upbraid them. In 1831 Mr. Abraham Ambrose
was proposed as a suitable candidate for ministerial office,
though there had been some hesitation on account of his
matrimonial engagements, but seven years after he was
suspended for moral failure. In 1841, on his profession of
repentance, he was restored to the ministerial position, only
to disappear in the following year. Two others came forward
during the 'thirties. One of these was Mr. John Guest, and
the other was the first Tamil Minister to be received — Mr.
Christian Arulappa. But the conditions offered to candidates
for the Ministry were onerous. After a probation of four
years, during which they were not expected to marry, they
might be received into full connexion, but there followed
another term of four years, after which they were to be
examined by the Synod, and, if found satisfactory, they might
then be ordained by the laying on of hands, and duly com
missioned to administer the sacraments. When these rules
were finally passed by the Committee both of the Assistants
immediately resigned.

Two other European Missionaries belong to this period.
The Rev. Alfred Bourne arrived in 1827 and the Rev. William
Longbottom in 1829. Both failed in health after a few years
of service. Bourne returned to England in 1834, but never
recovered, and died two years after. Longbottom went to
Australia, where he lived to do good service until he died in
1849.

While Bourne was in Negapatam he received a deputation
from certain villagers of Melnattam, asking that a Missionary
might be sent to instruct them. They had been members of
the Roman Church, but now wished to become Protestants.
This was in 1830, and great hopes were entertained that at
last the Mission was about to obtain a foothold among the
Tamil people, especially as there were several persons, not
Romanists, under instruction for baptism. Twelve months
later a small chapel was built and opened, and Bourne baptized
twenty persons. Melnattam was considered to be ' a key-
position ' in the surrounding district, and the eager Missionaries
at once began to talk of ' mass-movements ' towards the
Christian Church. Nine miles from Melnattam was the town
of Manargudi, and here, too, there were individuals who were

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inclined to receive baptism. Of Manargudi we shall have
much to say in a later chapter.

The hopes inspired by the accessions at Melnattam were
never fulfilled, and that which brought them to nothing was
caste. The social barriers erected by this system were not
destroyed when converts entered the Church of Rome, and the
Romanists of Melnattam who now entered the Methodist
Church brought with them a measure of observance which
would have speedily destroyed the sense of brotherhood in
Christ Jesus. Pariah members of the Christian community
were expected to accept a position of inferiority in public
worship. Thomas Cryer, who was the Superintendent of the
Negapatam Circuit in 1830, very properly set his face like a
flint against all such attempts to recognize caste in the
Christian Church, though in doing so he was obliged to forgo
the service of a Christian teacher in one of his schools. In the
paucity of such agents this was no small loss. But as a result
of the attitude of the Missionary the report was at once spread
abroad that all the Melnattam Christians had become Pariahs.
Betrothals and marriages were disanulled in cases where the
parties were of different social grades, and the attendance at
public worship rapidly dwindled away until a mere handful
of people were left. In all this it is significant that the dis
affected were all those who had seceded from the Church of
Rome.

In 1835 the Revs. G. Hole and T. Haswell arrived in Madras.
The former was transferred the following year to Ceylon, but
the latter was able to remain in India until 1849, when he
returned to work in England. But what gave the Missionaries
even more encouragement than this addition to the staff was
a letter from the Secretaries, signed by the Rev. John Beecham,
which suggested at least the outline of a policy to be followed,
and which also was expressed in terms of sympathy sadly
missing in former letters. The chief items of the letter were
as follow :

1. Two European Missionaries were to be appointed to each
station.

2. The head Native school at Negapatam was sanctioned,
and an annual grant of a hundred pounds was voted for the
purpose.

3. The occupation of Mysore was confirmed as ' urgent.'

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193

4. Two stations between Madras and Negapatam were
' contemplated/ and the towns of Sadras and Porto Novo
were suggested.

The letter then goes on to say that it was hoped that these
resolutions would dispel the idea that the Committee were
likely to abandon the Mission to India ; that it had been com
pelled to concentrate attention on the West Indian Missions
for the purpose of adapting them to new conditions arising
from the emancipation of the slaves. It closes with the
words :

We hope in future to be saved from the pain of seeing ranks thinned
by sickness, without daring to give you scarcely a word of relief, lest
words unaccompanied by deeds should seem only a mockery of your
grief.

At the Conference which followed on the writing of that some
what apologetic letter it was decided to send out at once five
Missionaries to Madras. The five were the Revs. Jonathan
Crowther (whose office was described as that of ' General
Superintendent of the Society's Mission in India and North
Ceylon '), W. S. Fox, J. K. Best, M. T. Male, John Jenkins,
and R. D. Griffith. Two years after four more were sent to
the same field. These were the Revs. G. U. Pope, William
Arthur, John Garrett, and E. G. Squarebridge. It seemed
that at last the Committee had decided to give adequate
support to those who had worked under such great
disadvantages.

It will be noticed that the appointment of Mr. Crowther
implied the supersession of Mr. Carver, and this was accentu
ated by the appointment of the latter to Melnattam with one
of the new arrivals, Mr. Fox, as a colleague. Carver was also
expected to supervise the work at Trichinopoly. A year later
he was sent to begin fresh work at Porto Novo, where iron
works had recently been started. This move, however, came
to nothing. Within two years the station was abandoned.

Carver felt that he had been harshly treated in sending
him to Melnattam. The village was small; there was no
properly constructed road by which to approach it. It had
no market, and supplies were obtained with difficulty. Carver
complained that after so many years of service he had been
' penalized ' in being sent to such a place. Fox complained

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that there was no work which he could do, and begged for
a transfer.

The Mission in South India had not yet come to the close
of its difficulties, and the opening years of the 'forties were
years of peculiar distress. W. S. Fox had been compelled to
seek the recovery of health by a sea-voyage, from which he
did not return. He died and was buried at sea. Three others
resigned their connexion with the Methodist Church under
peculiar circumstances. About this time there was much
discussion in Madras with reference to Church orders and the
validity of sacraments administered by those who were not
of the Anglican Communion. Trouble had arisen, too, in
connexion with the burial of Nonconformists in the public
cemeteries. The first to withdraw from the Methodist Church
were the Revs. Robert Carver and G. U. Pope. The former
says in his letter of resignation, ' After serving the Wesleyan
Methodist Missionary Society for twenty-six years I am led
through long experience and deep reflection to perceive with
regret that, however beneficial that system may be in a
Christian country, its operations in the East are not attended
with the advantages expected from them. I beg therefore
to tender to the Society most respectfully my resignation.'
He adds that he had ever considered himself a member of the
Anglican Reformed Church although connected with the
Wesleyan Society, which he thought to be ' a valuable adjunct
to the Establishment.' These secessions were followed by that
of the Rev. J. K. Best four months later, and several Assistant
Missionaries followed suit. These last were members of the
East Indian community, and there was much correspondence
between the Wesleyan Superintendent and the Anglican Bishop
as to the reception of these into the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel without inquiry as to character from those under
whom they had served. There were similar secessions from
the London Missionary Society. The most notable of those
who thus joined the S.P.G. was the Rev. G. U. Pope, the
brother of the Methodist theologian, whose name is still held
in great reverence and affection. Dr. G. U. Pope remained
for many years in India, where he became known as a great
Tamil scholar. He finally retired to Oxford, where he took
up work in Tamil, and was University Reader in that language
for many years.

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There were losses during the same year in the Mysore Mission
which will be related in due course. Suffice it to say here that
of the nine men sent out towards the close of the 'thirties only
Crowther, Male, and Griffith remained, while of the Missionaries
in Madras prior to their arrival Carver and Longbottom had
gone. This was an extraordinary dispersal of a particularly
strong contingent. The plight of the District was as bad as ever.

The Committee evidently expected much from the appoint
ment of Mr. Crowther. He had already served in the Ministry
for fourteen years when he accepted this appointment, and
it was thought that his experience, tact, and counsel were
what was most required in India at this time. They con
sidered that the comparative failure of the Mission was due
to the youth of the Missionaries rather than to their own lack
of policy. Crowther was therefore appointed to take up work
more especially in English, but he had also to supervise the
work carried on in Jaffna, Negapatam, and Bangalore. As the
two last-named stations were distant from Madras nearly two
hundred miles, and as travelling was done by the slow and
irksome vehicle known as the ' palanquin/ it may be imagined
that his journeys entailed considerable spells of absence from
head quarters ; and while he was thus away from Madras the
burden of the English work fell upon his colleagues, so that
there was no great relief derived from having a man definitely
set apart in this way for work among Europeans. He arrived
in Madras under circumstances which were little short of
calamitous. His ship, with a large missionary party on board,
was cast ashore fifty-seven miles south of Madras. Mr.
Griffith, one of the Missionaries, and the ship's surgeon made
their way to Madras, and measures were at once taken for the
relief of the passengers. Carver and Hole set out from Madras
with palanquins, and the Mission party was found at a point
about seventeen miles from their ship. What those miles
must have meant to the women and children, flung ashore,
where the language spoken was quite unknown, without pro
visions or any of the necessaries of travel, we may easily
imagine. At length they reached Madras, and ultimately the
greater part of their luggage was salved from the stranded
ship and sent after them. But anxiety and exposure brought
on Mr. Crowther an attack of dysentery, which for some time
prevented him from taking up his onerous duties.

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About this time the English-speaking congregation of Black-
town developed a strong animus against work among Hindus,
and attempted — sometimes in ways that were open to reproach
— to secure for themselves the Missionary of whom they
approved, whatever his colleagues might think as to his proper
destination. The two branches of work, the English and the
vernacular, were thus thrown into mutual antagonism.
Crowther at first sympathized with the Blacktown congre
gation, though he took no step which favoured them in their
contention. He also felt that the whole system of missionary
education stood in need of drastic reforms, but he made no
effort to introduce them. It was not long before he, too,
began to complain of unsatisfactory communications from the
Mission House. Questions raised by him were disregarded,
or the answers were so long delayed that the workers became
restless and suspicious. Crowther points out that at this
period of Mission work in India most of the Societies were at
variance with their representatives on the field. Doubtless
the imperfect knowledge of the conditions of work in India,
together with the long intervals which of necessity elapsed
before inter-communication was possible, accounts for the
general feeling of dissatisfaction. Not even yet were the true
lines of approach to the citadel of Hinduism clearly seen, though
there were one or two signs which indicated that they would
presently be discovered. While Pope and Best remained in
the Mission they concentrated on street-preaching, and their
efforts began to make an impression on Hindus, who up to
that time could well afford to ignore the attempts made to
reach their people. The preaching of the Gospel by Mission
aries qualified to speak the language of the people among whom
they worked — that was the first line of approach. The second
was that which unfortunately has so often been considered
to be a conflicting method. The beginnings of educational
work appeared in Negapatam, where a movement in favour
of higher education was started among well-to-do Hindus,
who offered to pay good fees if Griffith would undertake the
education of their sons.

Another encouraging item is found in the fact that Samuel
Hardey had by this time won the affection and confidence of
the people, after a hard struggle against the recognition of
caste in the head Native school. He hoped that it would be

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possible to enlarge the latter, though he saw clearly enough
that this would mean setting a man apart for this work
exclusively.

Crowther's chairmanship was not of long duration. His
health, seriously affected by shipwreck, had never been very
good, and in 1842, after five years of administration, he re
turned to England. If no special feature of his administration
appears in the records, it was nevertheless of advantage to the
Mission that during a period of extraordinary difficulty their
chief was one who so fully possessed the confidence of the
Committee. It is remarkable, too, that even in those troubled
years the young men saw visions which kindled both hope
and enthusiasm. Thus we find a Missionary of sound judge
ment, always based on a wide and sympathetic outlook, the
Rev. R. D. Griffith, writing in 1840 :

The missionary apparatus is complete, and all that is required is
that it be put in motion. . . . Short as life is, I am almost certain that
if the Church at home by increased and persevering prayer secure us
these promising aids, the present generation would not pass away with
out hearing of such an enlargement of the Kingdom of Christ as is not
recorded in the history of the world.

Crowther was followed in the Chairmanship by the Rev.
Joseph Roberts, who had served in Ceylon from 1819 to 1831.
After twelve years spent in the home work he came to Madras
in 1843, served faithfully both his Lord and the Church for
six years, and died at Palaveram in 1849. He was a man ' of
fine physical appearance, of considerable force of character,
and he had a gift for languages and a passion for preaching
Christ to the Hindus/ These are great qualifications for
missionary work, and Roberts made full proof of his ministry.
It is recorded that from that day to this he has been represented
on the Mission field by one or other of his children, his grand
children, and his great-grandchildren. It was during his
Chairmanship that the head quarters of the Madras District
was moved from its first position to that which it still holds
at Royapetta. The Mission House in Madras has always been
a true home, not only for those who served in the Madras
District. It has always had a welcome for brethren on their
way to or from other Districts, and its rooms have been
hallowed by the passing of those who have given life itself

ig8 THE FIRST ADVANCE

as the pledge of their service. Perhaps the outstanding event
of this period of administration was the issue raised by the
candidature of two Tamil Agents who adhered to the observ
ance of caste considered as a system of social distinctions.
Of this test case for the Methodist Church in South India we
have written fully in the chapter in which caste has been
discussed,1 and we shall not go over the ground again. For
Missionaries feeling acutely the limitations imposed upon them
by the paucity of men employed in aggressive work among
a multitudinous people, it was a hard necessity which drove
them to reject the service of two men, who in most respects
seemed qualified for admission into the Ministry of the Church.
But to Roberts and his colleagues it was a matter of conscience.
With infinite regret they took up the only position which
seemed open to them, and doing so they saved their own souls,
and the Methodist Church of South India.

Of the Missionaries sent out during the 'forties the greater
number were sent to the Mysore country to develop the work
among the Kanarese people. Those who were attached to
the Madras District were the Revs. J. Pinkney and J. Gostick
in 1843, and Ebenezer E. Jenkins in 1846. The last-named
was destined to leave an indelible mark on the whole structure
of Missions in India, and his enthusiastic advocacy of their
cause after his return to England in 1863 profoundly affected
the Methodist Church. He was most effective as a preacher
in English, and on his first arrival gave some little anxiety
to his colleagues on account of his expressed desire to be
appointed to Madras rather than to Negapatam, to which
place he had been sent. He is described as ' an estimable
young man, but too sensitive for this fervid climate.' The
Chairman, recognizing his special gift, wisely removed him
to Madras, and in that city he soon acquired immense influence
on account of his sermons preached in the Blacktown Chapel.
He had mastered the art of addressing a congregation, and
he never lost it. His subject-matter was always well chosen
and admirably thought out ; while his piquant phraseology
enabled him to carry conviction to his hearers. An enthusiastic
disposition made him sometimes more optimistic than the
facts allowed, but of the hold which India had upon his imagina-

>See p. 138.

THE FIRST ADVANCE 199

tion and affection there could never be any question. In 1877
he was appointed to be one of the Secretaries of the Society,
and in that capacity he paid an official visit to the East in
1884-1885. Another addition to the staff was found in India.
Mr. Peter Batchelor had come to that country to serve as a
layman in connexion with the C.M.S. Press in Madras. In
1837 he came forward as a candidate for the Methodist Ministry.
He was accepted, and in 1838 he was appointed to Bangalore.
He afterwards served in most of the Circuits in the Madras
District. Of his marriage with Miss Twiddy, and of his later
service in South Africa, we have already written.1

Joseph Roberts was the first Madras Missionary who died
on the field, though others had died while engaged in the service.
He had gone to Palaveram for the sake of his health, but was
worn out by excessive toil. His powers of recuperation were
exhausted, and in 1849 he entered into his rest. In a letter
dated April 15, 1849, R- D. Griffith writes bitter words of the
passing of his Chairman. The Committee about this time
discountenanced the return of Missionaries on furlough even
in cases in which they were entitled to claim it, on the ground
that the return of so many men from the field had ' a most
injurious effect on the friends at home,' and shortly before
his death Roberts had said, ' If I went home I should be ruined
by the Committee.' Griffith himself had suffered from this
action of the Committee, and his feeling was accentuated
by the death of Roberts under such circumstances.

The Chairman next appointed was the Rev. Samuel Hardey,
who had been on the field since 1829. He presided in the
Synod until 1853, when he retired to Australia, and afterwards
spent some years in South Africa. Three years after the death
of Roberts the Madras District was called to bear another
grievous loss. The Rev. Thomas Cryer — one of the saintliest
men who have ever served in the Mission field — had taken
furlough in England, and returned to India, arriving in Madras
on October i, 1852. The day after his arrival he was attacked
by cholera, and after suffering for four days he, too, passed
from the scene of his earthly service. His grave is to be found
in the Cathedral Cemetery side by side with that of his friend
Joseph Roberts. The record of his character and service is
as follows :

1 See Vol. IV., p. 20, and Vol. V., p. 36.

200 THE FIRST ADVANCE

In zeal and vigour he was seldom surpassed. In spite of opposition
before which an ordinary spirit would have quailed, in spite of the long
delay of prosperity, in spite of most acute family and personal afflictions,
his heart was undaunted. Few Missionaries excelled him in power of
utterance, in adroitness of effect in dealing with the sophisms of
Brahmans, in indignant invective against the corruptions of heathenism,
and in persuasive appeals to conscience.

Such were some of those who laboured, with but a scanty
fruitage to reward their labour, in the early days of the
Methodist Mission in India.

The returns of membership in South India for the year 1849
may here be given. In Madras there were no Native Ministers,
Catechists, or Local Preachers. There were a hundred and
sixty-one members, but it is not stated how many of these
were Tamils. In Negapatam and Manargudi there were two
Catechists and forty-two members, with about fifty on pro
bation — the latter representing the disaffected Christians of
Melnattam. In the Mysore State, on the Tamil side, there
were a hundred and forty-eight members ; but here again no
distinction is made between Tamils and persons of European
descent. On the Kanarese side there was one Catechist and
thirty-seven members.

The best comment on these results is to be found in a letter
from the Rev. E. E. Jenkins to the Committee, written in
December, 1849 :

Of the laborious zeal of the Missionaries I make no doubt ; but the
reports from their stations for many years back show that there are
vital defects in our methods of directing missionary labour. For where
are our Native Churches ? In which of the four places — Madras,
Bangalore, Negapatam, and Manargudi — have we made anything like
a permanent impression on the Hindu population ? . . . I will admit
that in one or two instances, perhaps, the Gospel has left a triumph as
well as a testimony ; but no system was in operation to maintain the
stand which Truth might have commanded. There was no religious
establishment to wall round and protect the seed, which perhaps here
and there betokened promise. Preaching in the popular sense of the
term was the only efficient means in use ; for I regard the class of schools
adopted as inoperative ; nay, in some instances noxious — I mean those
in which a Hindu schoolmaster is employed to teach Christianity.
Had there been a school of superior aim, immediately and constantly
under the experienced eye of a Missionary, the strictly evangelistic
work of the circuit would have been supported, and its fruit preserved.

THE FIRST ADVANCE 201

He then reviews the different centres of work, showing the
meagreness and inefficiency of the agencies employed, and
concludes with the words : ' My heart is moved for our Tamil
Mission, and I feel it a duty from which I cannot escape to tell
you the whole truth, to represent things as they are.' It must
be confessed that the record up to the close of the 'forties was
not one which the Church can regard with feelings other than
those of humiliation and distress. Better days were in the
providence of God to come, but that which might have been
will remain to keep before our minds the frailty of human
judgement, and the necessity of long and prayerful considera
tion before embarking upon schemes which are creditable
rather to the enthusiasm than to the judgement of those who
devise them.

While missionary operations in the Tamil Districts of Madras
were thus caught ' in the doldrums,' an extension in the Native
State of Mysore had been begun, and as this was until 1848
administered from Madras, and affected by changes in that
District, its earliest history belongs to this chapter of our
record. The earliest Protestant Mission in the Mysore State
was that of the London Missionary Society, two Missionaries
of which arrived in Bangalore in 1820. Their first efforts were
not rewarded with success, for reasons into which we need not
enter here, and it was not until 1827, when a Missionary was
transferred to that city from Bellary, that a real start was made
by that Society. We have seen that Messrs. Hoole and Mowat
were appointed by the Wesleyan Missionary Society to begin
work in Bangalore in 1820, and in 1821 they duly arrived at
their destination. They were, however, like their brethren
in Madras, distracted from their main purpose by the spiritual
needs and claims of Europeans. A number of these were
found in Seringapatam, the historic fortress of which had been
occupied by the British after the downfall of Tippu Sultan
in 1799, and the attempt to minister to them made anything
approaching concentration in Bangalore most difficult. Mowat
and his wife took up their residence in that town, but Hoole
was continually touring between it and Madras. The story
of his tours may still be read in the volume published by him
in 1844, and it affords the reader a vivid description of
missionary experience during those times. But with the
exception of his first journey Hoole 's tours were not of historic

202 THE FIRST ADVANCE

importance. They did not lead to the forming of a Church
in any one of the towns he visited, and we need not here make
any further reference to them.

Methodist soldiers in Bangalore had secured a small property
in the Cantonment, where they used to assemble for worship
prior to the coming of Mowat. A renewal of the grant of this
site was obtained, and a small school was built upon it. In
this building Tamil services were begun, but in 1822 Mowat
and Hoole were removed, and the Mysore Mission was sus
pended. It was resumed in 1826, when the Rev. J. F. England
was appointed to take charge of it under circumstances already
related. By that time the schoolhouse in the Cantonment
had fallen into decay, and the only place which England could
find was a stable on the Mission compound which he adapted
for purposes of worship. Here the devout soldiers of regiments
stationed in Bangalore, together with other Europeans, assem
bled for worship, but the surroundings were not such as to
attract any but those who were so desirous of worshipping
together that they were content to meet in a stable. For a
long time England was unable to obtain better premises. The
terms, under which the area covered by the Cantonment had
been taken over from the Native State by the British, declared
that the territory occupied was to be used ' for military pur
poses/ and it was held that such terms foreclosed the acquire
ment of land by Missionaries. Presently, however, properties
held by individuals began to be offered for sale, but now a
further difficulty arose. By this time the Missionary Com
mittee had issued strict injunctions that no property was to be
acquired without their expressed sanction, and twelve months
would pass before permission could be received in answer to a
proposal to purchase any property that might come into the
market. It was not until 1829 that at last premises were
secured which allowed for regular worship under seemly
conditions. England had given forcible expression to his
views that English work in Bangalore should be reduced to
a minimum, and in asking for a colleague to be sent to his
assistance he had urged that he should give himself up entirely
to the study of Tamil. When in 1830 the Rev. Thomas Cryer
and his wife arrived some little friction arose between the two
brethren on this point, as Cryer naturally wished to take some
part in the work of preaching in English. His contention

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was not furthered by the scorn which he heaped on ' the
Etruscan Church ' which England was by that time erecting.
Relief was felt by both men when Cryer was transferred to
Madras in the following year. The Rev. Samuel Hardey was
appointed in his place, and the chapel was opened for worship
on December 25, 1831. But England had exhausted himself in
its erection ; his health gave way, and he returned to the home
work in 1832. Hardey took charge of the work in Bangalore.

Then, in the providence of God, there appeared on the
Mysore field a Missionary who was to give form and stability
to the new Mission, and after forty-four years of service was
to retire with the unique satisfaction of seeing the Church,
which had scarcely obtained a foothold in the Bangalore
Cantonment when he arrived, fairly established in the greater
part of the province. The Rev. Thomas Hodson was sent in
1829, together with the Rev. Peter Percival, to open a new
Mission field for the Methodist Church in Calcutta. Both
men were possessed of gifts and qualifications above the
ordinary ; this above all, that each was able to form a definite
policy in directing missionary operations, and each had both
force and determination in carrying out the policy formed.
Each was gifted with a facility in acquiring language, and
though Hodson remained in Calcutta for only three years, he
was in that time able to obtain a thorough knowledge of
Bengali. In 1832 the Mission to Calcutta was given up, and
the men were sent, Percival to Ceylon and Hodson to Bangalore,
where he was to initiate a Mission to the Kanarese people.
The explanation of this withdrawal as given by the Committee
was twofold. In the Report we read that ' results ' — only
three years had elapsed, and both men had to acquire the
language — ' results had not come up to expectations, and the
funds required for its maintenance may be more usefully
directed to further the work in other fields.' But in a letter
from the Secretaries we read that ' the gloomy and desponding
representations of Mr. Percival induced the Committee to
relinquish Calcutta.' Probably the latter fact unduly affected
the Committee, and made it ready somewhat hastily to despair
of ' results.' However that may be, the Mission to Calcutta
was closed, and it was not reopened until 1860.

Before Thomas Hodson left Calcutta he wrote to the Com
mittee a long and most important letter. This is an historic

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document, for it is at once a criticism of former policy and a
manifesto of what should be followed in the future. It is of
interest to observe that the lines of work he afterwards laid
down — not always with success — in the Mysore State closely
followed — mutatis mutandis — those which he outlines while
still in Calcutta. After commenting on the fact that having
been at pains to acquire Bengali he is now to be sent to a
country where that language is not spoken, he asks to be
assured that by the time he has acquired the use of the
Kanarese language he will not be transferred to some place
where only Tamil is spoken. Then he goes on to say :

I have frequently written to you concerning the plan of our Indian
Missions, and the more I see of it, and the more I think of it, the more
I am convinced that it is a bad one. . . . Do you ask me what are the
evils complained of ? I will tell you, as I have told you before, and as
I shall continue to tell you, until you understand ; for I am persuaded
that as soon as you understand the case you will immediately act upon
it.

1. We have no means of raising up a Native agency.

2. The Missionaries have laboured more for the English than for the
heathen.

3. The Missionaries are stationed too far apart.

He then goes on to give flagrant instances in support of each of
these statements, and their perusal must have brought home
to the Secretaries that it was high time that radical changes
in their methods of directing the work were made. But
Hodson was constructive as well as critical, and he proceeds
to outline a scheme for Mission work in India.

1. Instead of six Missionaries scattered into five or six
Circuits a hundred miles apart, let there be six Missionaries
appointed to one Circuit, containing three or four Stations
not more than four miles apart, and in the midst of a Native
population.

2. At three of these stations let there be a house and a
school on the same premises, and a chapel as near as possible ;
each Missionary to teach in the school every day, and let
services for the instruction of the heathen be held in the chapel
four times a week.

3. At the most central station let three brethren reside.
Let there be two chapels to be used as in other stations, but

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instead of an elementary school let there be one of a higher
kind, to receive promising boys from the other schools. Let
each of the three Missionaries be directly appointed to teach
in this school three hours every day, the teaching to be of such
a character as shall prepare the students for the work of the
Ministry.

This may be called the ' intensive method/ as distinguished
from the extensive method hitherto followed. Hodson is
very clear as to the urgent necessity of securing an indigenous
Ministry, but he protests that education as then carried on
is utterly futile for producing such a Ministry. He anticipates
objections from those who would not like so much teaching as
this scheme would bind them to take up, and also from those
who ' having spoken great swelling words of vanity concerning
the effects of the present system, do not wish to acknowledge
their error,' and he closes with the hope that the Committee
will adopt the plan he proposes.

This letter marks the close of a system foredoomed to failure,
and the beginning of a new policy in Indian Missions. From
this time the Committee began to insist upon Missionaries
giving their chief attention to Hindus, and though its commit
ments in the Madras District were too great to allow of an
immediate reversal, they sent out to Hodson's assistance in
the carrying out of his scheme a generous supply of able
Missionaries. After arriving in Bangalore, where for one or
two years he exercised a general supervision of the work done
on the Tamil side, Hodson was authorized to make a tour of
the country covered by the Governments of Mysore and Coorg,
that he might select a suitable centre for the Kanarese Mission,
and his choice fell upon Gubbi. To those who visit Gubbi
to-day that choice must seem a strange one, nor can it be
claimed that it has been justified by results. But it is easy
to see that his selection of this town was in accordance with
the principles he had laid down. There was no European
population in Gubbi to divert the Missionaries' attention, and
Brahman influence was at a minimum. It was the centre and
market for a large number of villages whose inhabitants, it was
hoped, would more readily give heed to the things spoken by
the apostles of that time. But Hodson did not see — probably
in those early days of his ministry he could scarcely be expected
to see — that in placing his centre among the people of the

206 THE FIRST ADVANCE

middle class he was confronting a conservatism more unyield
ing perhaps than any to be found in India.

But Hodson was far from rigid in his views. He never
intended the work at Gubbi to foreclose operations elsewhere,
and presently we find him opening a Kanarese school for boys
in the Bangalore Petta, where Kanarese was the language
spoken. Two years later he acquired twenty acres of land
just outside the city. On that site the many agencies of the
Mission in later days found their respective homes. One of
the first of these was an English school for the higher education
of Hindu students.1 Hodson had discovered that a move in
this direction might be made with advantage. Hardey's
return to England left the Tamil work in Bangalore without a
Missionary to direct it, and the Synod of 1834 nad even pro
posed the abandonment of the work. Hodson, however,
undertook the supervision of it, but he limited his efforts on
the Tamil side of Bangalore to teaching in an Anglo-Tamil
school which he opened in the Cantonment. This was most
successful, and now, at the request of Hindu gentlemen of good
position, he opened a similar school on the Kanarese side.
At first this was held in a rented house situated within the
walls of the Fort, but it was difficult to do much in that school
while he continued to reside in the Cantonment. He sought
permission to change his residence that he might have readier
access to the Kanarese people. In 1835 he preached his
first sermon to these.

The Committee was full of sympathy, and promised to
consider any proposal he might make, but even now they were
unwilling to give up work among the English. Thereupon
Hodson asked that four additional men might be sent out for
work among the Kanarese people. In 1837 we find him at
Gubbi, living in a tent while a small thatched cottage was
being built. He had for his assistant the Rev. C. Franklin,* and
these two proceeded to preach in the streets of Gubbi and in
the surrounding villages. The Tamil work in Bangalore was
taken up by the Rev. Thomas Cryer, though the architecture
of the chapel still continued to vex him.

In 1838 the additional men for the Kanarese Mission arrived,

1 Both Hodson and Percival came under the influence of Duff at this time.

* Mr. Franklin afterwards seceded from the Methodist Church and joined the
S.P.G. under circumstances scarcely creditable to himself.

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but, alas for Hodson's hopes, they were two instead of four.
The Revs. John Jenkins and M. T. Male were first instructed
to reside in Bangalore until a house could be built for them at
Gubbi. In addition to these the Rev. P. Batchelor joined
Cryer in Tamil work in Bangalore. There was now much
discussion as to the occupying of Mysore City, and Hodson
considered that if this were done Coorg might be added to the
new Circuit ! He was, however, opposed to beginning work
in Mysore City on the ground that a Missionary of the L.M.S.
was already there, and as an alternative he proposed that
work should be begun at Kunigal, a small town twenty-five
miles from Gubbi, and, like the latter, the centre of a large
village population. The Synod, however, decided against
Hodson, and appointed him to begin the work in Mysore City.
For some time the L.M.S. continued to be represented in the
city, but after a while the Missionary was withdrawn, and
from that time to the present the capital was left, as a Mission
field, entirely to the Methodists. In 1839 further additions
to the staff enabled the Synod to complete its scheme. The
Rev. John Garrett joined Male at Bangalore, where the latter
was still suffering from dysentery contracted on his voyage
out. The Rev. William Arthur was sent to join Jenkins at
Gubbi, and the Rev. E. G. Squarebridge was appointed to
Mysore City. The plan of having two Missionaries in each
centre was now complete, though it did not long remain so.
Hodson soon made his personal influence felt in the capital.
The Raja himself became most friendly. The latter had
established an English school in the city, and Hodson began
work in the same direction by opening a school in his own
house. When presently the head master of the Raja's school
was made tutor to the young Prince, the Raja not only handed
over his school to Hodson, but also provided him with a suit
able house, and promised an annual grant for its maintenance.
This arrangement continued until 1850, when the direct
relation of the Raja's school with the Mission was brought
to an end. Male had paid a visit to the Hodsons in Mysore
in the hope that a change of air would be beneficial to his
health, and in 1840 he returned to Bangalore quite recovered.
He was then sent to join William Arthur in Gubbi, Jenkins
being brought into Bangalore. The move was unfortunate.
Male's children were delicate, and subject to attacks of

208 THE FIRST ADVANCE

croup, and at Gubbi there was no medical aid available within
a two days' journey. In a few brief months the two little
graves, so familiar to those who have since occupied the
Mission house at Gubbi, marked the price paid for the privilege
of service. Almost immediately after, Male was one day
hastily summoned to Kunigal, where Squarebridge was
fighting a grim battle with death. The latter had spent one
year with Hodson in Mysore City, and during that year had
made excellent progress in learning the Kanarese language.
He said of himself that during that year he was ' as happy as
it is possible for a human being to be.' His removal in the
following year to Kunigal was a sore trial to him ; but, like
the good soldier that he was, he obeyed. Kunigal was an
unhealthy station, and the sanitary arrangements in the
unfinished bungalow were far from satisfactory. He was
attacked by cholera, and the life so full of promise was closed.
The sorrows of 1840 were not yet ended. William Arthur
had given himself up to the study of Kanarese with an ardour
characteristic of his temperament, and the strain upon his
sight proved to be more than he could bear. It was hoped that
complete rest on the Nilgiri hills would enable him to recover,
and he spent some months at Ootacamund, but medical
opinion was insistent that if sight was to be saved he must
return at once to England. In 1841 the brief term of his
service in India came to a close. One sentence written by
him will serve to indicate the feeling with which he left India :
' Gladly would I have resigned every hope of seeing in this life
a single relation, had the Lord only counted me worthy to
preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
But His will was otherwise.' It was a brief term of service,
but within the few months India had laid hold upon both mind
and heart, and he fully acknowledged her claim. His service
for India was not yet closed. From 1851 to 1868 he served
as one of the Society's Secretaries, and the glow and passion
of his heart, as well as his mental grasp of Hindu life and
thought, may be seen on every page of the volume he published
in 1847, entitled A Mission to the Mysore.1 Thus by the close
of 1840 the prospects of the Kanarese Mission were clouded
over. Hodson remained in Mysore with an ' Assistant ' to

1 A new edition of this work, edited by the Rev. Henry Haigh, was published in
1902.

THE FIRST ADVANCE 209

help him, and Male, with another ' Assistant/ remained at
Gubbi. Jenkins and Garrett were in Bangalore. The Mis
sionaries were depressed by reason of their losses, and even
more so because as yet not a single convert from the Kanarese
people had come forward to gladden their hearts by a confession
of Christ.

In one of his earliest letters to the Committee Hodson had
pleaded that in sending out Missionaries for Mysore one might
be selected who had a knowledge of medicine, and another
who understood the technicalities of printing. In seeking to
begin medical work in 1833 he was far ahead of his times, but
among those sent out in 1839 was John Garrett, and he had
been a printer before entering the Ministry. Towards the
close of 1840 a press was set up in the Mission compound in
Bangalore, and its management was entrusted to Garrett.
This was the first printing-press set up in the Mysore State,
and for thirty-two years it issued vernacular and English
books which were invaluable in the schools of the Mission, to
say nothing of the printing of the Kanarese Bible in 1845.
This press was given up in 1872, under circumstances which
will come before us, but its work was taken up again in a press
which was set up in Mysore City. In those earliest days
Garrett did excellent work in this department, and it was a
matter of infinite regret that charges were brought against
him which he failed to meet, and he resigned his connexion
with the Society in the following year.

The decade of the 'forties was an unhappy one in the Mysore
Mission. Hodson 's health was obviously failing, and in 1843
he returned to England, where he remained for ten years.
The Committee was slow in responding to his repeated pleas
for a minimum of two men in each Circuit, but in 1842 the
Revs. J. Gostick, E. J. Hardey, and Daniel Sanderson were
sent out. The first-named was delayed en route, and arrived
on the field in 1843. He spent four years at Kunigal, and then
his wife's health compelled him to take her to England. He
never returned. In 1846 the Revs. B. Field, T. B. Glanville,
and J. Morris arrived. But Field, after two years in Gubbi,
returned to the work in England with broken health, and
Morris, after four years of service, also withdrew for a time,
owing to failure of health. Two years later came the Rev.
J. M. Cranswick, whose temperament made him ill-suited to

210 THE FIRST ADVANCE

such work as India demands. After one year at Gubbi he
returned, without waiting for permission, a depressed and
despairing man. The death of Squarebridge while alone at
Kunigal led to much discussion as to whether single or married
men should be sent out to India, and some of the probationers
already on the field sought permission to marry before the
term of their probation had expired. Refusal created a spirit
of discontent. About this time several of the ' Assistant
Missionaries ' resigned their position, and attached themselves
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. To add to
all this, Mr. Male, who after Hodson returned to England
was alone in Mysore City, became so friendly with the Raja
that he was admitted by the latter to some knowledge of his
personal embarrassments. He came under suspicion, and
the British officials were annoyed at the position he occupied
in the private affairs of the Raja. He was charged with enter
ing into political intrigue, and though this was never proved,
and was indignantly denied by Male himself, he was severely
censured by his brethren at the Synod. All this was distinctly
depressing, and still the long-desired harvest of much faithful
sowing was delayed. It began to look as though the Kanarese
people were wholly irresponsive to the appeal of the Gospel.
But this delayed response was in reality due to characteristics
of the Kanarese people, and to social conditions in the Mysore
country, which we must now consider.

The Mysore country is situated on the tableland between
the Eastern and the Western Ghats, and in consequence
enjoys the annual blessing of two monsoons — ' the early
and the latter rain.' The people inhabiting this favoured
country naturally gave themselves up for the most part
to agriculture, and their irrigation works, many of them
constructed in far distant days, have often compelled the
admiration of European engineers. But the tiller of the
soil is notoriously conservative in temperament, and his
mind is less impressionable than that of one who is engaged
in the ever-changing conditions of industry and city life.
The Kanarese mind is thus less likely to be moved at once
by appeals made by the teachers of a new religion. There
is also less of the serf in the average labourer or small cultivator.
In some parts of the District such conditions are not unknown,
but for the most part the Kanarese Pariah is fairly independent ;

THE FIRST ADVANCE 2II

in good seasons he is prosperous, and may even be wealthy.
Christianity does not hold out to these any prospect of better
ment in material wealth. On the contrary it entails, when
accepted, the loss of property. For the Hindu law of inherit
ance ordains that if a man abandons the faith of his ancestors,
he thereby forfeits any claim he may have upon ancestral
property, and in a notorious judgement of the Mysore Court,
to which we have already referred,1 he also ceases to have any
control over his own children. Even among the lowest classes
of the Pariahs a man often faces the loss of all things, if he
would follow Christ.

Under such conditions it does not seem likely that there will
be anything deserving the name of a ' Mass Movement '
among the Kanarese people, unless indeed some ' Breath of
God ' should pass over the fields and gardens, and quicken
in the hearts of those who till them that spiritual hunger which
Christ alone can satisfy. With the exception of a quite modern
movement to the south of Mysore City conversions were made
one by one, and, where they proved to be genuine, the motive
which led to decision was wholly religious and spiritual. All
this was clearly enunciated by the Rev. W. H. Findlay when
he visited the Mysore District in his official capacity as Secre
tary of the Society in 1906. In his report of that visit he
says :

The low castes, to whom in Haidarabad we devote all our strength,
are found in scanty numbers in Mysore, where our business is with caste
populations, sturdy conservative peasant-farmers, acute and cultured
Brahmans, independent and indifferent shopkeepers, and the like.
The steadily pursued aim of District policy has been to spread through
this mass of caste Hinduism the leavening influence of Christian educa
tion and Christian literature, while at the same time seeking a hearing
as far as might be, for the direct appeal of the Gospel. Wide dissemina
tion of truth, aiming at the gradual transformation of the community
as a whole, has been preferred to methods that would give more rapid
numerical results.

The first convert among the Kanarese people was ' Chikka/
afterwards known as ' Old Daniel,' the washerman of a little
village near Gubbi, of whom William Arthur wrote words of
insight and sympathy and love. Only by such cases of in
dividual conviction of sin and through faith in Christ did the

1Seep. 148.

212 THE FIRST ADVANCE

Kanarese Church grow to the dimensions observable to-day.
The long waiting tested the faith of those who sought to lead
the people to Christ, and gave ample occasion to the critic
for pointing out the disparity between the amount of money
spent in missionary operations and the number of converts
secured.

Hardey and Sanderson were at Gubbi in 1843, but towards
the end of the year Hardey was desperately ill, and
Sanderson was depressed and ill-content with his appoint
ment to Gubbi. Gostick, when he at last arrived, was
appointed to Kunigal, but resided at Gubbi until a house
could be got ready for him at Kunigal. After the trouble
arising out of Male's intimacies with the Raja he was
removed to Gubbi, and Sanderson was sent to Mysore City.
An indication of coming changes in the stations was given
in the Synod of 1844, when the Chairman, the Rev.
Joseph Roberts, after visiting the Circuits in the Mysore
District, strongly advised that Tumkur should be occupied
instead of Kunigal. By this time Hodson, Jenkins, and
Arthur were all in England, and, as was the case in Madras,
the return of Missionaries was deplored by the Secretaries in
terms which seemed harsh and unfeeling. In the case of all
three their return was amply justified. Their places were filled
by the appointment of the Revs. Benjamin Field, T. B. Glan-
ville, and Joseph Morris in 1846. Three years later the
Mysore Mission became a separate entity. Up to this time
it had been administered from Madras, but in 1849 it came
under independent administration, the Rev. John Garrett
being its first Chairman.

IV
PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

(i.) THE MADRAS DISTRICT : ' THE SOWER '

The kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God is
ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

Behold the sower went forth to sow ; and as he sowed some seeds
fell by the wayside. . . . Others fell upon the rocky places. . . .
Others fell upon the thorns. . . . And others fell upon the good ground.
— MATT. xiii. 4-8.

This chapter is a story of the sowing of the good seed of the Kingdom
in a wide and varied field. The result differs with the soil into which
the seed may fall. The human heart may fail to grasp its own relation
to the seed ; it may be shallow, or choked with noxious growths. The
seed in each case is the same, as are also the care and purpose of the
sower, but only those who are simple and sincere will reveal in themselves
the harvest which rewards the sower's toil.

IT was in the decade of the 'fifties that the dawn of a brighter
day began to appear in the Madras District, but at its
commencement the prospect was dark enough to give point to
a familiar adage. True, additions had been made to the staff.
The Revs. J. Pinkney (1843-1862) and J. Little (1844-1859)
were both able to complete a long and honourable term of
service, and the Rev. Arminius Burgess (1852-1869), who
followed early in the decade, also served with great efficiency
and distinction. The Revs. J. Hobday and P. J. Evers were
the only two Assistant Missionaries, but they proved to be of
higher type than those hitherto mentioned. The only Mis
sionary on the field in addition to these and the Chairman, the
Rev. Samuel Hardey, was the Rev. E. E. Jenkins, and this
was the staff which ' occupied ' Madras, Negapatam, Trichino-
poly, and Manargudi, each with its quota of English congrega
tions, schools, and other agencies of missionary work. 1 It is,

*The Rev. John Kilner was brought from Ceylon in 1849, but he had then no
knowledge of Tamil.

213

214 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

therefore, not surprising that ' concentration ' was the order
of the day. Stations such as San Thome, St. Thomas' Mount,
Royapuram, and Poonamalee were left to other Societies, and
the Missionaries in Madras confined their attention to
Royapetta and Blacktown. In the former the high school,
so much advocated by Dr. Jenkins, was opened, and we shall
trace its development into the college to which his name was
given. A boarding school for girls was also opened, and this,
too, was destined to grow into an institution of great value.

The return of Thomas Cryer from furlough was all
the more eagerly expected because of this shortage in the
supply of experienced Missionaries, but almost as soon
as he landed in the first week of October, '1852, he was
attacked by cholera. For twenty-two years he had given
himself without stint in the service of his Lord and Master,
and he had it in his heart to serve still further, but he was not
to fulfil his purpose, and he died on October 5, 1852. He was
a Missionary of extraordinary zeal and vigour. He did not
spare the corruptions of heathenism when he encountered
them, and he excelled in his use of the Tamil language. To
him the preaching of ' the Cross ' was the only but sufficient
method of bringing men to realize the death by which men live,
and to that topic he gave himself up with all his heart. All
other instruments were to him not to be compared with the
' preaching of the Cross.' Like another greater apostle, he
determined ' to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ
and Him crucified.' His loyalty won him great respect, and
his love for men won him many hearts.

His death was a terrible blow to the depleted group of
Missionaries in Madras, and when this was followed the next
year by the sudden departure of the Chairman, the prospect
before the District was gloomy to a degree. Samuel Hardey
was a man of beautiful character. ' Gentleness, courtesy,
saintliness ' — such were the traits his brethren found in him.
But he was much more than would be indicated if the record
stopped at that point. He was no mean scholar in Tamil, and
his devotion to the service of the Church was unlimited. After
leaving India thus suddenly to save his life, he served for many
years in Australia and in South Africa, and crowned a long
and laborious life by a triumphant death in 1878. The Rev.
Arminius Burgess arrived in 1852, and was associated with

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 215

Dr. Jenkins in Madras. No attempt to preach in Tamil was
possible, but the Blacktown Chapel was crowded on Sunday
evenings by those who delighted to listen to the great preacher
of that day. On the side of evangelistic work among the
surging crowds of Madras there was nothing to be done but to
wait for reinforcements from England. But misfortune
seemed to thwart every endeavour. In 1855 the Rev. R. D.
Griffith, who was already known as an able financier, a firm
disciplinarian, and an able thinker, arrived to take the place
of Samuel Hardey in the chair of the District. He, too, had
just landed when he was smitten down. He hastily returned
to England in the hope of saving his life, but he died almost
immediately after his arrival. The District was again deprived
of its administrative head, and the Committee instructed the
Rev. Thomas Hodson, who in 1854 was returning to the Mysore
Mission, to remain in Madras and to administer both Districts
until they should find a suitable Chairman for Madras. All
this was depressing enough. It seemed as though the work
in Madras would never ' get going.' But just as in the earliest
days of spring there comes a day on which, though no definite
signs that winter has relaxed its grasp are apparent, men never
theless feel that ' spring is in the air/ so by the middle of the
'fifties a spirit of hopeful anticipation made itself felt among the
hard-pressed men in Madras. In 1855 the Revs. W. O. Simp
son and Robert Stephenson arrived, the latter to take charge
of the English work at Blacktown, and the former, with his
big heart filled with a passion of love for the Hindu people,
ready to give himself up wholly to their service. It may safely
be said that effective work among the Tamil people began
with his coming to Madras. Pinkney was bravely ' holding
the fort ' in Trichinopoly, and his quiet persistence was
beginning to tell. Conversions began to rejoice the hearts of
the Missionaries. Springtime was surely close at hand.

Both Manargudi and Melnattam were derelict stations in
1855. In the former the chapel was represented by a mound of
earth, and in the latter most of those whose admission into
the Methodist Church had awakened such bright hopes had
relapsed into heathenism. Melnattam was a sad instance
which Dr. Jenkins might have used if he had needed to give
point to one of the wisest utterances he ever made when he
said : ' In India everything depends upon effort never diverted,

216 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

never interrupted, never diminished.' But even in these
two stations there were signs of revival. Many years were to
pass before they became centres of strong and fruitful work,
but they were never abandoned as hopeless fields for the
tillage of the Church.

Simpson went for a few months to Negapatam, where he
took charge of the English school. His broad mind, deep and
genuine sympathy, and his genial humour at once began to
win for him an extraordinary influence over his students, but
he did not remain long in Negapatam. While there he was
diligently learning Tamil, to such effect that he became most
proficient in the use of that language, and few could equal
him in preaching to those whose minds and hearts he swayed
in the streets of Indian cities much as he afterwards did in
the crowded chapels of his own country. The following year
he was sent to Trichinopoly.

The year 1857 will always be marked in the annals of India
as the year of the Great Mutiny. In the records of the Church
it indicates the beginning of a new era in missionary operations
in a land where infinite regret goes side by side with infinite
hope. The Christian Church can never stand apart from the
struggles of humanity. It is implicated in every movement,
whether of nations or of classes within the nation, and every
apocalyptic conflict reveals Him who is at once the Lion of
the tribe of Judah and the Lamb slain from the foundation of
the world. When the double shock of the outburst of bar
barity, and of the deplorable reprisals which followed it, had
passed, England turned with a new interest to consider the
people whose destinies were so closely interwoven with her
own, and the Christian Church took upon itself a heavier
burden of responsibility for the evangelizing of India.

A light was thrown upon the attitude of the Government
of India in matters of religion. The loudly proclaimed
' neutrality ' of the East India Company had been compromised
by timid concessions made to idolatrous practice. Financial
grants made to temples, as well as considerable gifts offered by
prominent officials of the Company, were interpreted by some
as being prompted by fear, and by others as a recognition of
the supremacy of Hinduism. It was a just retribution for an
unworthy policy of showing something more than toleration
towards Hinduism, and something less than consideration

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 217

towards Christianity, that when the outbreak came the incident
chosen for its justification was found at the very point which
the Government had sought to guard by an attitude which
often compromised their position as representatives of a
Christian nation. So convinced were the people of Govern
ment favour toward their religion that in the Queen's pro
clamation, which ' closed the incident ' of the Mutiny, one
paragraph which to a European signifies the coldest religious
impartiality, suggested to Hindus the active protection of the
Government for every custom, however revolting, and for
every idol, whatever form its worship might take. There
followed religious riots in Travancore and Tinnevelly which
had to be suppressed by the employment of military force.
So difficult is it to overtake the issues of a wrong policy in
the past, and so easy is it for the East to misunderstand the
West.

At the time of the Mutiny Methodist Missions had not ex
tended beyond the south of India, and, though there was
abundant anxiety, that part of the country passed through
the great crisis without any serious outbreak. But the im
munity of its own representatives did not tempt the Methodist
Church in England to stand aside from the responsibility thus
laid upon the Church Universal. A large sum was contributed
towards the relief of sufferers, and the Missionary Society
resolved to increase its staff of Missionaries. There is some
thing like a confession of fault in the Committee's Report for
the year 1858 :

It had long been felt by many that this vast field had not hitherto
received its due proportion of the means of the Society, and when such
a call for a new effort on its behalf arose it was felt that a continuance
of its past neglect would be inexcusable.

It would have been well if this enlightenment had come in
time to prevent the heart-break of many a Missionary, and
the unnecessary sacrifice of many lives. The Committee
resolved to send out ten men at once, and, if their funds allowed,
to send out twice as many in the course of the following year.
But of even greater value than this reinforcement was the
fact that the Church now began, together with the British
public generally, to study more intelligently the conditions
of life and thought in India ; for where that point is assured.

218 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

the flow of sympathy and the urgency of prayer in the Church
on behalf of its ministry across the seas is bound to follow.

There were other movements indicative of quickened interest
in Missions which greatly added to the efficiency of workers
in India. The Christian Literature Society for India and
Ceylon, whose publications have immeasurably strengthened
the Missionaries in their work, was formed in 1858, the Earl
of Shaftesbury being its first President and the Rev. William
Arthur writing its first appeal. Since then this Society has
established branches in most of the provinces of India, Burma,
and Ceylon, and its publications appear in more than twenty
languages spoken within the area in which it serves its noble
purpose. The same year saw the formation of the Women's
Auxiliary to the Wesleyan Missionary Society. This has meant
the coming of light and hope and joy to countless thousands
of the women of India, and its future is as unlimited as is the
field which it has set out to claim for Christ.

The list of the Madras stations in 1858 presents a happy
contrast with that of preceding years. The Revs. W. R.
Cockill, J. Jones, and T. Robinson were associated with the
Rev. E. E. Jenkins at Royapetta, and they had in addition
the collaboration of the Rev. P. Evers, an Anglo-Indian
Minister.1 In Blacktown the Rev. S. Symons had joined
Robert Stephenson. Batchelor had returned to Negapatam,
and he had as his assistants the Rev. A. Levell, one of the new
recruits, and the Rev. E. Gloria, an Indian Minister. W. O.
Simpson was at Trichinopoly with the Rev. G. Hobday, another
Indian Minister, to assist him. For the first time in its history
the Circuits in this district were fully manned. Conversions, too,
began to follow on the preaching of the word. In 1857 a Brahman
student of W. O. Simpson's, while the latter had charge of the
School in Negapatam, escaped to Madras and was there bap
tized. This was the distinguished Indian gentleman known
in after years as Devan Bahudur Subramanyam Iyer, who
became Administrator-General, and who gave to the Society
the Kalyani Hospital, named in memory of his mother.
Probably the fact that his baptism took place in Madras and
not in Negapatam accounts for the absence of excitement on
the occasion. But in the following year Viziarangam, a

1 It was hoped at first that an indigenous Ministry would be found in the Anglo-
Indian community, but with a few notable exceptions the men chosen for this
service proved to be unsatisfactory.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 219

Mudaliar by caste, who was attending the school in Royapetta,
came forward and confessed his faith in Christ and sought for
baptism. His parents did their utmost to persuade him to
abandon the idea, but the young man was faithful to the
allegiance he confessed. When it was found impossible to
deter him from the carrying out of his purpose the Mission
house in which he had taken refuge was besieged and stormed
by an angry mob which was determined to remove him. The
two Missionaries, E. E. Jenkins and W. R. Cockill, only escaped
by a hasty retreat over the wall of the compound and into the
bungalow of a neighbour, and the agility of Dr. Jenkins seems
to have been something of a surprise to himself. Viziarangam
was fortunately able to conceal himself from the mob, and was
shortly afterwards baptized. The Mission house was wrecked
by the crowd of infuriated persons, and it was thought desirable
to bring the ringleaders to justice. They were duly punished
by the magistrate. Other conversions followed, and almost
for the first time the pulse of healthy, vigorous life was felt in
the Church. Plans for extension began to be considered by
the Missionaries in Madras. The first actual extension, how
ever, took place in the neighbourhood of Negapatam, where
land was acquired at Tiruvalur, a town of which we shall have
more to write later on.

Under the care of the Rev. Arminius Burgess the Royapetta
School continued to develop, and the girls' boarding school
also gave great satisfaction to those who were at its head.
After the death of the Rev. J. Roberts in 1849 Mrs. Roberts
continued to reside in Madras, and gave herself up to the work
of training the girls in the school. She continued this beautiful
and efficient service for ten years, returning to England in
1859. Her patience, wisdom, and kindliness were all employed
in forming the character of her beloved pupils.

Towards the close of 1859 Dr. Jenkins, as Chairman of the
District, visited the outlying stations, and we cannot do better
than accompany him in our endeavour to understand the stage
reached at the close of this eventful period. After a journey
of five days he came to Trichinopoly, where Cockill had joined
Simpson ; and, with the Rev. E. Gloria to help them, the
Trichinopoly staff was as strong as could be expected. Like
a wise Superintendent, Simpson had set Cockill almost
entirely free from other duties that he might give himself up

220 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

to the study of Tamil. Simpson had also initiated a system
of fixed localities for street-preaching, acquiring inexpensive
shops in the bazaars, and holding services in such places at
fixed intervals every week. The school was in an initial stage,
but Simpson might be trusted to create a school out of the
most unpromising material, and in Trichinopoly the material
was excellent. The Native Church was very small ; only
seventeen members were returned in 1859.

Manargudi was occupied by two Indian Ministers, the Revs.
Joel Samuel and G. Hobday. In this town the Mission premises
were in a sad state of disrepair. ' House, furniture, garden,
and grounds are an utter discredit to us/ Jenkins felt that
' Somehow he have wronged Manargudi.' For one thing, the
Mission house was too far from the town. That defect was
put right by the purchase of a good site just outside. For
this the sum of £15 was paid. But that which had brought
about the failure at Manargudi was not the remoteness of the
Mission house, but the uncertainty of tenure on the part of its
occupants. Nothing so troubles the mind of the timid persons
who may wish to join the Church as the reflection, only too well
grounded, that their teachers and protectors of to-day may be
gone to-morrow. There were thirty-seven boys in the English
school — no great number, but the germ out of which a worthy
college, bearing a worthy name, was to come. There were
only four members of the Church in Manargudi. Melnattam
was a ' wilderness.' The poison of caste had destroyed the
fellowship of the Church, and its material setting had been
ruined by neglect. But Jenkins hoped that better days would
come, and was unwilling to abandon the station. It was in
this decade that we first find a mention of Tiruvalur, a town
situated between Negapatam and Manargudi. Here a site
had been purchased in the hope that it would be possible to
appoint a Missionary to this town before long.

Negapatam, where Batchelor was stationed with the Rev.
Alfred Levell, a newly arrived Missionary, was in a far
more hopeful condition, though the observance of caste was
still prevalent among the members of the Church, and pre
vented that fullness of communion which is the life of Christians.
Both the school for boys and that for girls — the latter well
cared for by Mrs. Batchelor — were prosperous. There were
a hundred and fifty-nine pupils in the one and fifty-five in

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 221

the other. The influence of caste is clearly seen in the returns
of membership. While the number of those attending public
worship was two hundred and seventy, the members were only
four.

From Negapatam the Chairman returned to Madras. Here
the membership was a hundred and forty-eight, being about
equally divided between Blacktown and Royapetta. The
total number of pupils in the schools was five hundred and
seventy-two. It cannot be said that even now, forty-five
years after the arrival of James Lynch in Madras, the increase
in the Methodist Church of this District was in any way com
mensurate with the efforts that had been made to found it.

In 1863 W. O. Simpson was brought to Madras, and he at
once set about giving to the Church something more of an
indigenous and less of a foreign character. One step in this
direction was the introduction of Christian hymns, composed
in Indian metres and sung to Indian tunes, in place of the
often bald translation of English hymns sung to tunes that
were foreign to the people and entirely out of harmony with
their own conception of musical arrangement. This was a wise
and most important step to take, but Simpson soon saw that
the true key to his problem was to be found in the character
and quality of the Indian Ministry, and at that time a Tamil
Ministry did not exist. Such training as had been attempted
had been spasmodic and imperfect. Naturally no result had
followed. Simpson obtained permission from the Chairman
to experiment for one year. He took a house with adjacent
buildings suitable for the accommodation of students, and
gave himself up to the work of training them. It is an unhappy
feature of the administration of those days that before he could
obtain permission to attempt what was universally admitted
to be an essential feature of any Mission in India he
had to accept a personal responsibility for any additional
expense that might be incurred. His four students were
Subrahmanyam,Gunaswami,Kalyana Raman, and Kuppuswami
Row. The three first-named were Brahmans, and the fourth
was of the Sudra caste. Simpson's ' Theological Institution '
contained first-rate material. Both Kuppuswami Row and
Kalyana Raman subsequently entered the Ministry, and for a
long time stood high in the esteem of their brethren. It is
grievous to be obliged to record that both of them came under

222 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

temptation, and their conduct was such that their separation
from the Ministry became necessary. *

Another event of 1863 may be recorded here, for though
at first it seemed to lead to nothing, it was nevertheless the
first movement in a direction which led to a fruitful field.
That event was a visit paid by the Revs. E. E. Jenkins and
George Fryar to the Telugu country bordering on the River
Godavery. The jubilee of the Society was at that time being
celebrated in England, and one result of the meetings held
was the gift of a hundred and eighty thousand pounds by the
Methodist people for missionary work. It was hoped that some
of this generous gift might be used for the beginning of mission
ary operations in the Godavery region. But the only
immediate result of that contribution, so far as the work in
India was concerned, is to be found in the sending of two
Missionaries to Calcutta. It is true that five thousand pounds
was set apart for ' the Godavery Mission/ but nothing more
was heard of that Mission for fifteen years. Jenkins and Fryar
travelled up the Godavery River for two hundred and twenty
miles until they came to Sironcha, which they strongly recom
mended as a station ' to be occupied with the least possible
delay.'

Yet another event of a year in which the Church was
evidently ' feeling after ' an extension of its activities was the
appointment of the Rev. John Jones to begin work in Karur.
In 1861 a request for a school had come from that town ; and,
a suitable site having been given by the Government, it was
determined to make a start. A small Society of twelve persons,
who had come from other places, was already in the town,
and the Synod felt that it could not neglect the double claim.
Such was the beginning of what was to become a most fruitful
work in after years. This year was also the last that Dr.
Jenkins spent as a Missionary in India. Thenceforth his work
was to be found in England, and he accomplished it with the
same distinction as had characterized his service in India.
An even more serious loss befell the District in the following
year. Simpson's furlough was due, and he left India, never
dreaming that he was not to return. But the failure of Mrs.
Simpson's health left him with no alternative to remaining in
England.

1 See The Life of the Rev. W. 0. Simpson, p. 176.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 223

W. O. Simpson was a man of the open heart and of the open
mind. Ready in sympathy, which was never feigned, he
quickly won the love of all with whom he had to do. The
heavy shadow which fell upon his home during his furlough was
never allowed to depress those who were admitted into fellow
ship with him, and this obliteration of all that is born of self-
pity or self -consideration, making him a genial companion
even when the shadow on his own heart was deepest, was the
secret of his personal influence among Hindus. His mind
was as open as his heart. He was quick to see the meaning
of things. Imagination — one of his great faculties — enabled
him to grasp issues hidden from the generality of men, and
he added to this a natural force of expression which made him
one of the most effective speakers of his day. More than most
men he had the secret of moving an audience, but this gift
was never allowed to degenerate into any form of meretricious
oratory. Such gifts and graces in combination gave him a
commanding influence over his students in India. Their love
went with their respect and reverence, and it seemed as though
he was destined to be a great power for good in South India.
But God had other purposes for His servant. In the Hudders-
field Synod of 1881 the call came in a moment, and in a
moment it was answered, and W. O. Simpson passed into the
immediate presence of the Master whom he had loved and
served.

Of the Missionaries sent to this District in the 'sixties there
were at least two who left a distinct and permanent mark upon
the Methodist Church in South India. The Rev. Henry Little
arrived in 1862, and was stationed in each of the several
Circuits of the District in turn, until in 1874 he came to Karur.
Here he was to build his great memorial, for he was still in
the Circuit when the great famine of 1877 passed like a destroy
ing angel over South India.1 How he gathered the pitiful
orphans together, and tended them with a father's heart, and
out of these helpless creatures of suffering built up the Industrial
Schools of Karur, will be told in another chapter.1 In 1881
he was appointed to be Chairman of the undivided District,
but in 1885, when the division was made which gave Negapatam
an independent administration, he remained in Karur as
Chairman of the newly formed District, and continued to serve

1 See p. 229. * See p. 230.

224 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

there until 1893, when he returned to England. The close of
a long and fruitful Ministry came in 1912.

Equally distinguished was the career of the Rev. William
Burgess, who came to Madras in 1867. To him it was given
to inaugurate the Methodist Mission in Haidarabad, and in
1888 he was appointed Chairman of that District. There
will be much to say of his administration when we come to
tell the story of Haidarabad. In 1902 we find him in Rome,
where again he served in the Chair of the District, returning
finally to England in 1918. Others there were who served
faithfully, and by quiet persistence in the face of grievous
disappointments succeeded at last in lifting the work in Madras
out of the Slough of Despond into which it had fallen. Both
Henry Little and Robert Stephenson had much to say as to
the causes of this desponding effort which had resulted in
failure. For ' failure ' is the only word which can be used when
we find the Chairman of the District, Robert Stephenson, in
1865 pointing out that ' We have been fifty years in India,
but have done no more than lay the foundations of a Native
Church — if, indeed, so much as that can be said without
exaggeration/ In a very able letter he claims that the explana
tion of this is twofold. The Methodist Church had been called
to take up work in Madras, where the distractions and con
centrated wickedness of a great city abounded, and along the
course of the River Kaveri, where Brahmanism was in great
power. That is to say that the two forces of materialism and
priest-craft were at their strongest in the two sections of the
Madras District. Even thus the result might have been
different but for the second reason, which was that the work
of the Missionaries had been inadequately and irregularly
sustained. The policy of the Mission House in England had
been strangely defiant of the two great principles of missionary
work in the East. Those principles were concentration and
continuity, and neither had been observed. This is a voice
from out of the distant past, but it has its warnings for to-day.
Henry Little in an unfinished article writes in a more
trenchant style to the same effect, but goes on to claim that
in spite of the disappointing experiences of the past the same
fatal weakness was apparent again in the new work being
taken up in the north of India. The facts which he passes in
review have been already before us, and we need not repeat

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 225

them. It certainly has not been for want of clear, vigorous,
and sometimes indignant protests that the fatal policy of
diffusion of effort has been followed. Better days were to
come to the Methodist Church in South India, and the spirits
of good and faithful servants, long since entered into the joy
of their Lord, now rejoice over that for which they toiled and
prayed during the long years of hope deferred.

In 1867 Stephenson, who was now the Chairman of the
District, visited the Circuits outside Madras, and his journal
gives us a succinct account of their condition. Though eight
years had passed since Dr. Jenkins had made a similar tour,
the recurrent notes in Stephenson 's journal are those of
struggling Missionaries and Mission buildings falling into
decay. In spite of the cheery, hopeful spirit of the writer,
the resultant picture is that of a Mission starved both in men
and money. The Jubilee Fund had brought no relief. The
observance of caste was still maintained by the Christians of
Negapatam, and they finally invited the German Lutheran
Evangelical Mission to begin work in the town. On their
doing so they attached themselves to those who would deal
more tenderly with their caste prejudices. A mere remnant
of a once large congregation continued to worship in the
Wesleyan Chapel. Stephenson, however, saw as clearly as
Simpson had done that the real cause of weakness in the Church
was to be found in the condition of the indigenous Ministry,
and he was the first to take a practical and official step towards
organizing and giving a definite position to Lay Agency, out
of which he hoped that the ordained Ministry would come.
He inaugurated annual meetings of Catechists and other
Agents ; a course of study was laid down, and it was resolved
that greater attention be paid to the moral and spiritual
qualifications of candidates for admission to this particular
agency. But the Madras District was still in sad plight.
The year 1867 was a year of disaster. No less than five
Missionaries were that year obliged to return to England owing
to failure of health, and the annual Report shows an actual
decrease in the membership of that year. A new and much
needed girls' school at Royapetta, and the increased attend
ance in the boys' school at Negapatam, due to the withdrawal
of the S.P.G. in our favour, were the only cheering items in
the records of the 'sixties.
15

226 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Stephenson had been in the District since 1855, and for the
first six years he had ministered to the English congregation
at Blacktown. In 1861 we find him at Trichinopoly, delighted
to take up work in the vernacular. In 1865 he was appointed
Chairman, but in that year he was compelled by domestic
affliction to return to England. Ten years after he returned
to Madras, greatly to the joy of his colleagues, to resume the
Chairmanship. But this was only for two years ; he left
India finally in 1878, and retired from active work in the
following year. ' Self-discipline, sincerity, gentleness, and
enthusiasm ' — such were the outstanding features of his
character, and he was as kind and as courteous to his Indian
colleagues as to his European brethren. He was succeeded
in the Chair of the District by Arminius Burgess.

Another Missionary who was able to remain in this District
for a considerable period was the Rev. George Fryar. He
came to Madras in 1860, and remained on the field for twenty-
two years, during the last two of which he was Chairman. He
was a devoted and enthusiastic Missionary, and it is said of
him that he could speak Tamil as easily as any Hindu in
Madras. He lived a long life of seventy-five years, and passed
to his rest in 1910.

Any report of work in India given by Dr. Jenkins was
certain to be of interest, and his felicity in giving expression
to his always suggestive thought made it delightful reading.
Not the least of these stimulating documents is that which
he gave to the Committee as the result of a visit paid by him
to the scene of his former labours in 1876. By that time the
tide of missionary enterprise was setting strongly in favour
of education, and Dr. Jenkins was too convinced a missionary
educationist not to respond to the movement. But he also
saw the perils attending too exclusive a devotion to this branch
of the work. He feared that the desire of Hindus for educa
tion was due not so much to a thirst for knowledge as to a
desire to qualify for office under Government, and in order
to secure the social and financial advantages accruing there
from. Finally he gives his judgement in favour of making
the best of the movement in the interests of Christianity, and
hopes that the Church will lead the movement and not allow
its enemies to do so. He writes with characteristic enthusiasm
of the prospects in Manargudi, where the high school was

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 227

rapidly attaining a premier position among schools of its
class, and he urges an extension of the school premises on the
excellent site already in the possession of the Mission. Of
the education of girls and women he writes with equal hope
and confidence. Fifteen years before no attempt in this
direction had been made, but in 1876 there were sixteen schools
for girls in the District, with more than eight hundred girls
in attendance. He comments upon the need of following up
this work by zenana visitation, and deplores that no attempt
has yet been made to reduce this form of Mission work to
system. Last of all he comes to the depressing question of
the Indian Ministry. During the fourteen years preceding,
only three men had been received into the Ministry, and of
these one had come from another Church. The reason for
this failure in building up a Native Ministry he finds in that

We have never made the training of Native Ministers a distinct
branch of Mission labour. If we have the courage and patience to
review candidly the history of our Missions in the East, it will not be
easy to reconcile the non-existence of such an institution with fidelity
to the memory and sacrifices of the men who began our Indian work
sixty years ago, with the claims of the greatest missionary field in the
world before them.

But here Dr. Jenkins forgets that those Missionaries were
hampered at every turn by the policy of the home administra
tion, and by the failure to provide either the men or the means
necessary for such a work. The Missionaries would have
moved eagerly enough, but when the least attempt to depart
from the lines laid down by the Committee was almost certain
to evoke a letter of censure, we may well regard the non-
existence of such an institution as casting no reflection what
ever upon the fidelity of our first Missionaries in India. But
there was no question as to the soundness of his judgement
that however the fault of the past might be adjudged, there
was ' an urgent necessity ' for the work to be taken up
without further delay. ' The time has come for the immediate
establishment of a theological institution for South India/

At the time when Dr. Jenkins wrote this important letter
the Missionaries at work in the District were as follows. Robert
Stephenson was Chairman, and with him in Madras were three
newly arrived men, James Cooling, G. M. Cobban, and J. M.

228 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Thompson, each of whom was to play an important part in
the developments of the future. William Burgess was in
charge of the training institution for Native Ministers, twelve
students being in residence, but for that year he was absent on
furlough. George Patterson was the Methodist representative in
the Madras Christian College. The Tamil Circuit (Madras North)
was manned entirely by Indian Ministers under the superinten-
dency of James Hobday. Richard Brown was stationed at
St. Thomas' Mount. In the Negapatam section of the District
A. F. Barley and R. S. Boulter were in Negapatam ; G. Fryar
and T. F. Nicholson were at Manargudi. John Dixon was
at Trichinopoly and Henry Little at Karur. The staff had
never been stronger, and all the omens were in favour of
successful work, though the membership returns continued
to be small. There were only two hundred and fifty-two
Native members and a hundred and forty-eight English.

At the Conference of 1871 the Rev. James Gilling3 was
appointed Chairman of the District. We have already referred
to the service which this Missionary rendered in North Ceylon
during the years 1844-1853. After eighteen years spent in
Circuits in England he returned to Madras, and for five years
served as Chairman. He spent the evening of a long and
useful life, in the course of which his gentleness and fidelity
won him many friends, on the Nilgiri Hills, where he ministered
to the British soldiers stationed at Wellington. In 1897 he
passed suddenly to fuller life.

Arminius Burgess, writing in 1870, took a hopeful view of
the work in both Negapatam and Manargudi. Owing to the
withdrawal of the S.P.G. from their school in the former, our
school, at that time in charge of Henry Little, was the largest
in the District with the exception of the school at Royapetta,
and Brahman and Pariah sat together in the class-rooms —
this in a town in which even the Christian Church had been
rent asunder on account of caste prejudices. There was a
change at Manargudi also, but of a different character. It
was to be found in the attitude of Hindus towards the Mission.
That attitude had been for many years one of suspicion and
hostility, but the people had now come to look upon the
Missionary as their friend. At this centre the work had so
developed that Manargudi was no longer an out-station of
the Trichinopoly Circuit, but had become itself a Circuit,

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 229

with out-stations of its own, in each of which a Catechist was
stationed and a school opened. A truer knowledge of
Christianity and an appreciation of its spirit and aim had been
diffused throughout the surrounding villages, and this was a
prophecy of the great harvest one day to be gathered in this
field. At Tiruvalur, where for sixteen years Missionaries
had laboured without success, a young Brahman was con
verted, and was sent to Madras to be trained as a Mission
Agent.

In 1877 Henry Little came to Karur, the station with which
his name will always be associated. He found a reception
far from cheering. The house was small and dirty, full of
yet dirtier furniture, exposed to heat, glare, and the observa
tion of every passer-by. It was a perfect picture of discomfort.
The schoolhouse was on the verge of collapse. Worst of all,
though work had been done in Karur for fourteen years, the
Church had gained no hold on the life of the town, and Mis
sionaries were openly taunted with failure by Hindus. There
was a congregation made up of two or three Christian families.
In the providence of God Henry Little was to change the whole
aspect of things in this Circuit, and even to map out a scheme
of extension which was to prove extremely fruitful in far
distant days. It must be confessed that his initial difficulties
were discouraging, but he had a stout heart, and a grain of
determination in his character stood him in good stead. The
famine of 1877 gave him an opportunity he was not slow to
grasp.

The great famine of 1877 was felt far to the south of Madras.
Throughout the basin of the River Kaveri there was a
condition of suffering which taxed all the resources of
Government in its measures of relief. In the south there
was a terrible loss of life, as the starving people migrated
from more seriously affected districts only to die by thousands
on their way. Government had set up relief camps, but many
reached these only to die of exhaustion. Orphan children
became a pitiful feature of the camps. Missionaries at work
in the areas affected were prompt in bringing a Christian
compassion to bear upon this mass of suffering, and a com
prehensive scheme of relief was formed. The Girls' School at
Royapetta was merged in an institution to be called ' The
Children's Home,' with branches at St. Thomas' Mount,

230 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Karur, and Manargudi, girls being admitted to Royapetta
and boys to St. Thomas' Mount, but both boys and girls to
the other centres. In 1878 more than four hundred and ninety
children had shared the shelter and comfort of these homes,
but owing to death, and the reclaiming of children by relatives
after the famine, only two hundred and thirty remained at
the close of that year. It is interesting to note that all those
admitted to the homes at Royapetta and St. Thomas' Mount
were Pariahs, while in the other centres all but two were
Sudras. In the southern districts, where the famine was
more severe, the provision usually made under the caste
system was not forthcoming. Gradually the effects of the
famine passed, and it was found that the accommodation
provided at Karur was sufficient for all orphans who had
survived, and by that time Henry Little had thoroughly
organized a system of industry to meet their case. The
children from the other centres were therefore removed to
Karur. Presently land for cultivation was purchased at a
distance of some seven miles from Karur, and as the youths
and maidens grew up marriages were arranged between them,
and the young couples were settled on the land. A small
but increasing Christian community was thus formed, and
the Church began to take its place as a factor in the life of the
neighbourhood. A work undertaken from motives of pure
philanthropy resulted in a precious nucleus which grew into
a definite Christian community. Out of the dearth there
came a harvest for the Church.

More and more the relation of the southern to the northern
division of the District called for consideration. The latter
covered an area of nearly three thousand square miles, with a
population of a million and a half ; the southern covered
more than seven thousand square miles, with three and a
quarter millions of people, mostly in small towns and villages.
The two sections were two hundred miles apart, and
between them lay two large and populous Districts, Salem
and South Arcot. There was no probability that the two
sections would ever become contiguous, the work in Madras
pointing to an extension rather northwards than southwards.
The difficulty of working these sundered sections with a single
staff was very great, in spite of the fact that Tamil was the
language spoken in each. The whole staff would scarcely

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 231

have manned either of the two divisions. On the ground of
both economy and efficiency the separation of the two sections
seemed desirable, and so in 1885 Negapatam and Trichinopoly
were constituted a District apart from Madras, and the new
District was put under the care of the Rev. Henry Little.
The subsequent development of this District will appear in
another chapter. For the present we continue to follow the
course of events in Madras.

Up to the decade of the 'eighties the Church in that city had
scarcely fulfilled the hopes entertained when the pioneer
Missionaries appeared in it. It became entangled in obligations
imposed upon it by its location in a great city, and its move
ment away from the difficult centre was restricted by a scanty
provision of both men and money. In 1880 the Madras District,
apart from the sections centred in Negapatam and Haidarabad,
returned a Native membership of two hundred and fifty-six,
and there were in addition about a hundred English members.
This was a scanty harvest after sixty-five years of work. But
in the providence of God the time had now come for the
Methodist Church to break the bonds which had hitherto
bound it, and to move into the more fertile field of village life.
The men who were to lead that Church in its exodus were
already girding themselves for the enterprise. A small com
munity of Telugu-speaking people had joined the Church in
Madras, and in 1876 we find William Burgess studying their
language, little guessing in what distant fields he was to use it ;
and in Madras, for the time engaged in ministering to the
English-speaking Methodists, was George Mackenzie Cobban.
This last-named Minister had already travelled four years in
English Circuits when he came under the influence of W. O.
Simpson. In some respects the two men were not dissimilar.
Each had a strong and confident bearing, a happy temperament,
a ready wit, and a large and tender heart. In 1876 Cobban
offered his services to the Missionary Society and was sent to
Madras. In 1881 he was appointed to Tamil work, being put
in charge of the Madras North Circuit. He found in the
villages lying within the area of his Circuit a population of a
hundred and fifty thousand people, among whom no Christian
work of any kind was being done, and his first step was to
appoint Catechists to work in one or two centres, with the
result that in one village alone about fifty persons were baptized.

232 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

In a letter written in 1881, in acknowledgement of a gift from
Mr. J. S. Budgett which had enabled him to make this start
in the village, Cobban expressed his opinion that ' whole villages
will enter the Church when we can fully give ourselves to work
among them, and are ready to send men to instruct them.'

The new field was well chosen. It was not too far removed
from Madras ; it was unoccupied by any other Society, and while
fairly wide, extending forty miles north and west of Madras, it
offered an opportunity for concentrated effort — the very form
of work which has proved to be the most fruitful in India.
That letter of Cobban's was brought before the Committee, and
it had great weight with its members. An appointment was
at once made which, under the blessing of God, was to issue in
a large ingathering of precious souls into the kingdom of Christ.
In 1882 the Rev. William Goudie was sent to Madras. At
first he was appointed to minister to the English congregation
in that city, and this duty he performed with the force and
fidelity which characterized him to the close of his life, but at
the same time he applied himself to the study of Tamil, and
when the time came he passed out into the villages, a veritable
apostle to the Pariahs.

Meantime Cobban was insistent upon securing another
Missionary to help him in his work, and pleaded almost
pathetically for ' a small grant for evangelistic work.' If the
Treasurer would say ' Impossible/ his reply was that it was
imperative and ' the impossible must be done.' Could the
vision of the coming harvest have been then given to the
Methodist Church the response would have been both im
mediate and generous. As it was, Cobban had to wait. In
the report of the year 1886 the movement from the centre was
indicated by the statement that there was ' One wanted ' for
Madras North, and that Cobban had been appointed to
Tiruvallur.1

This town was the centre of the village area which Cobban
had so much at heart. It prided itself upon its temple. Its
priests were Brahmans, proud in their consciousness of power,
and unscrupulous opponents to the coming of Christian teachers
within their domain. They set themselves with bitter hostility
to resist any attempt which the Missionary might make to
bring freedom to the hapless people whom they and their

1 Not to be confused with Tiruvalur in the Negapatam District.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 233

forefathers had dominated for centuries. But the work was of
God, and nothing can bring that work to nought. The Church
in the Tiruvallur Circuit now numbers hundreds of devout
Christian people, invested with the dignity of freedom and
rejoicing in Him whose gift it was, and as we write the proposal
is being made to erect in Tiruvallur itself, hard by the temple
whose priesthood had used every means of thwarting the
Christian Missionary, a Christian church which is to stand as
the memorial of William Goudie. For though, during the
furlough of Mr. Cobban (1886-1888), Madras North had claimed
the service of William Goudie, and this had necessitated his
residing in Madras, when Cobban returned Goudie was re
leased, and took up his residence in Tiruvallur, the first Euro
pean to reside in this stronghold of Brahmanism.

Towards the close of 1884 Dr. Jenkins again visited India.
This time the visit was ' official/ as he was now one of the
Secretaries of the Society. Following on his report, a consider
able improvement in the finances of the District took place.
There was better provision for the houses of Indian Ministers
as well as an increased grant towards this particular agency.
A more generous provision for educational work was also
promised, and the Royapetta School was raised to the status
of a second-grade college. The Rev. James Cooling had steadily
developed that school until it was felt that the range of its influ
ence should be increased, and the Rev. W. B. Simpson — the eldest
son of W. O. Simpson — was sent out in 1885 to assist Mr. Cool
ing in this extended work. When the latter returned to Eng
land for furlough his place as Principal was taken by the Rev.
A. S. Geden, but the falling income of 1888 made retrenchment
necessary, and the last-named Missionary was recalled in
that year. His stay in India had been short, but, short as
it was, India had profoundly affected both his mind and his
heart, so that in after years he was able by the works which
he published to do much to make the life and thought of India
known to students in England. His coming on to the staff
had another effect ; it made it possible to release Simpson
from college work and to appoint him to evangelistic work in
the villages. His heart was set upon this, and in 1889 he was
sent to Madurantakam, a large town on the South India Rail
way, about forty miles south of Madras. Here there was
already a small high school, and later on Simpson opened a

234 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

training institution for the preparation of candidates for the
position of Catechists, the companion institution for training
candidates for the Ministry remaining in Madras, under the
care of Mr. Cobban. But Simpson, like his father, was a great
evangelist, and delighted in preaching in the villages of his
Circuit. The Church in Madurantakam at that time was
small, consisting of the members of four Christian families
residing in the town. A slightly larger Christian community
was to be found at Tachur, one of the villages near. Thus
by the close of the decade the work had moved out of Madras
in two directions, and in each there was distinct promise of
success. Goudie was in the north-west and Simpson in the south,
while midway between them, connected with the St. Thomas'
Mount Circuit, there was a most hopeful work being done at
Teiyur. Of this Circuit the Rev. J. R. Ellis had charge. T. H.
Whittamore was the Minister in charge of the English work,
and evangelistic work in Madras was not likely to be neglected
by Mackenzie Cobban. The District had entered upon a new
era, and the days of depression were over. Women Mis
sionaries of this period were Miss Lyth — afterwards Mrs.
Hudson — and Miss Hutcheon, and the beginnings of medical
work were to be found in a dispensary, of which Miss Palmer
had charge. About this time ' the Hindu Tract Society/ of
which we have written in another chapter, 1 was much in
evidence, and attempts were made to break up meetings which
were being conducted by Missionaries. Such efforts, however,
soon died away. The successful efforts to lift the Pariah out
of his ' dunghill ' had become convincing proof of the truth
proclaimed by the Christian evangelist, and it was not long
before it received both the attention and the commendation
of the Madras Government.

The 'nineties opened with some amount of disappointment
and distress. In England the unhappy missionary controversy
had caused a shrinkage in funds, the effects of which were
felt on the Mission field in severe financial restrictions which
were most unfortunate at a time when the Church was being
called to provide for a rapid extension of operations most
fruitful in results. It was a time, too, of scarcity almost
amounting to famine, and pestilence followed hard on the
heels of hunger. The Madras District was also confronted

'See p. 290.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 235

with the loss of two Missionaries of experience and, each
in his own sphere, of great force. The strength of
Mackenzie Cobban had been lavishly used in the service of
Christ, and the strain upon it had proved to be excessive. In
1891, after a service of fifteen years, he was compelled to
return to work in England. George Patterson had never been
very robust, and he had been threatened with a ' breakdown '
more than once, but he still held on to his work in the Madras
Christian College, and for some years was editor of The
Christian College Magazine, a journal of great influence in
South India. He, too, was ordered to return to England and
to give up all thought of another spell of work in India. It
was during his editorship that there appeared in the College
Mazagine the papers which disclosed the frauds practised
upon the public, under the name of ' Theosophy,' by Madame
Blavatsky and her coadjutors.

But though the loss of these Missionaries was severely felt,
the year 1891 was one of great increase in the Church. More
than three hundred persons had been baptized, and the number
might have been greatly increased but for the caution exercised
by the Missionaries in admitting into Church fellowship only
those of whose sincerity and honest conviction they were
assured. The movement in the Tiruvallur Circuit continued
to spread, and the village of Ikkadu began to be known as the
centre from which the waves of Christian life and power were
spreading over the whole neighbourhood. A description of
the general features of this movement appears in another
chapter, * and to avoid repetition only the outstanding events
which appeared in its course will be attempted here.

A children's home for both boys and girls was opened at
Ikkadu in 1889. Such homes are very necessary features of
Missions in India, if the youth of the Church is to be conserved
for clean and healthy manhood. Later on the two sexes
were separated, the boys being housed in a commodious build
ing erected by Mr. Goudie in 1902 and known as ' the Southern
Cross School/ From this school boys were drafted every year
to be trained as village teachers. At first they were sent to
Madurantakam, but later on to the institution at Guindy.
During Goudie's furlough he spoke with overwhelming force of
the work in these Pariah villages, and his burning words carried

1 See p. 396 ff.

236 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

conviction to the minds of his hearers. He received many gifts
for the furtherance of his work, and on his return he was able
to build a hospital at Ikkadu. This was ' a large and graceful
building/ and the first lady doctor to take charge of its ministry
of healing was Miss Palmer, to whose work in Madras reference
has already been made. This hospital was to be greatly
extended in after years. As Mr. Goudie says, ' It was built
by the love of Christian people, and stands as a monument
of that love to all who may either receive or observe the
ministry of kindness for which it was erected.'

William Goudie was not one of those who draw a sharp line
of distinction between evangelistic and educational work.
He saw that the teacher in the school, no less than his brother
in the village, was proclaiming the Gospel of love in Jesus
Christ, and he was not tempted by the paucity of baptisms in
the college to decry or to disparage the work done on the
educational side of Missions in India. In his opinion the ideal
Missionary would have ' the head of a philosopher and the
heart of an evangelist.' Thus we find this great evangelist
to the Pariahs making provision in his Circuit for educational
work among the higher classes by taking over from the Free
Church of Scotland Mission a high school that had been opened
in Tiruvallur, thus completing the chain of missionary agencies
in the Circuit under his charge. Every year now brought
its harvest to the Church, and in some years it was so bounteous
that there was not room enough to contain it. In the ten
years which followed 1884 the number of Tamil members had
increased from three hundred and eighty-nine to twice that
number, and there were in addition nearly four hundred and
fifty on trial for admission to the Church. There were six
Indian Ministers where there had been none, and thirty-nine
Catechists where there had been nineteen.

Several Missionaries great in gifts and in attainment joined
the staff of the District during the 'nineties. F. W. Kellett,
a brilliant scholar and a devoted Christian Minister, filled the
vacancy in the staff of the Christian college which had been
left by the retirement of George Patterson, and A. C. Clayton
took the place of Cobban. Thomas Little was appointed to
St. Thomas' Mount, and C. H. Monahan joined William Goudie
at Tiruvallur. In addition to these Mr. W. E. Hoare came
out as a missionary layman to serve as Vice-Principal in the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 237

Royapetta College. At the close of the decade the following
were also sent out : the Revs. G. W. Cox, C. Pollard, H. W.
Raw, J. Breeden, H. Waldron, R. E. Grieves, and A. O. Brown.
The Committee was now determined to keep the Madras staff
at full strength.

In 1888 the need for retrenchment had led to the closing of a
high school in Triplicane, a crowded part of Madras where
Brahmans in particular resided. In 1899 an opportunity for
beginning work again was accepted, but with this reoccupation
of an abandoned position there went an urgent request for the
special appointment of a Missionary to take up evangelistic
work among the more educated classes. The need for such
work was apparent to all. No one could speak of ' Elliott of
Fyzabad ' as other than ' an out-and-out evangelist,' yet when
he visited Madras in 1898 that which impressed him most was
the educational work which was being done in that city. He
wrote of his impressions in the Christian College, with its
thousand students, and of his equally vivid impressions in the
Wesley College at Royapetta, with its six hundred students
coming every day face to face with the Jesus of the Gospel
story, and this is his conclusion of the whole matter :

I am profoundly convinced of the need of a specially qualified and
gifted man for the work among educated Hindus. There is a great
field here ready to harvest.

Another evangelist — William Goudie — in reporting the transac
tions of the Decennial Conference held in Madras at the close
of 1902, says :

The Committee recognizes that in Mission schools and colleges many
thousands of the most promising young men of India and Ceylon have
come under the reconstructive forces of the Gospel of Christ, and have
so far yielded to those forces that many of them are not far from the
kingdom of God. The teachers of the Gospel to growing young boys
have prepared the soil and sown the seed which it falls to the lot of other
workers to watch and water, until they bring it to a beautiful and
abundant harvest in the lives of full-grown men. It is coming to be
recognized that the work of Mission schools and colleges is not complete
in itself, but needs as its complement the work of earnest and enlightened
evangelists especially adapted to deal with educated minds. The
Christian Church is slow to recognize the responsibility which she has
incurred in her schools and colleges, where she has not only disturbed
the faith of many thousands of young men, but has also quickened the

238 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

faculty of moral discrimination without imparting the power of moral
choice. There is no part of our missionary economy where we permit
greater waste than here. We are creating a class of men who know
the truth and cannot choose it, who know the right and dare not do it,
and we are before God responsible in a great measure for the moral
culpability inseparable fron this unhappy condition of mental enlighten
ment and spiritual impotence. The Committee was surely wise in
adding its voice to that of the Education Committee in an earnest
appeal to the Churches to set apart men of special aptitude for this
work.

The Missionary Committee in England was slowly coming to
the same conclusion, and in the ' Policy of Advance ' set forth
in 1901 the following item in the programme appears :

To provide for the appointment of a man, if the right man can be
found, for evangelistic work among the educated classes in Madras,
among whom there is splendid opportunity for bringing to fruition by
special agency the missionary influence of our schools and colleges.

But the Missionaries on the field could not wait for the discovery
01 ' the right man ' in the Churches at home, and in that same
year two Missionaries, each of them already overburdened
with work, began evangelistic work among the students of
Triplicane. They were the Rev. G. G. Cocks, at that time
Principal of the Royapetta College, and F. W. Kellett, whose
appointment to the Christian College we have already noticed.
They began modestly enough, but the work grew rapidly, and
before the Centenary year there was in this swarming hive of
Brahman youths a Christian Institute, with its hall for preaching
and lecturing, its library, reading-room, and recreation-room,
in addition to a small hostel and rooms for two Missionaries.
The Christian influence of this Institute can never be tabulated,
but it remains an indisputable fact.

Alas ! Long before it reached its full development the two
who had most to do with its inception were taken away in the
fullness of their vigour. Kellett died during his furlough in
1904. He was one of those rare souls who add to great learning
a child-like heart. A Double First at Cambridge, University
Prize-man, and Fellow of his College, the simplicity of his
nature was his outstanding characteristic. The work he did —
and it was always done with amazing efficiency — was prodigious,
and there can be little doubt that the overtaxing of his

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 239

physical powers was the cause of his early death. ' In twelve
short years he compressed labours and achievements that
would have given distinction to a long lifetime, and won a
position of unrivalled influence and usefulness.' So runs his
record. But the charm of a selfless life can never be put into
words, and one who shared his life at school, at Cambridge,
and again in India can only bow reverently at the grave of his
friend, who ' in meekness of wisdom ' seems to him to have
touched the highest point of Christian life and character. It
was entirely fitting that the Institute at Triplicane should be
dedicated to his memory, and bear his name. After his death
many distinguished scholars have served in this Institute,
some of whom are still on the field. The vacancy on the staff
of the Christian College was filled in 1906 by the appointment
of Mr. F. E. Corley.

Even before the passing of Kellett his companion in the
work at Triplicane had run his course and won his prize. The
Rev. G. Gower Cocks was appointed Vice-Principal in the
Royapetta College in 1900. He, too, had won the love of his
students, and their affection was strong enough to break
through all the bonds and restrictions of caste, for Christians,
Muhammadans, and Brahmans bore his body to its grave.
It will be enough to quote here the words of his Chairman,
the Rev. William Goudie, in an obituary notice : ' I shall
offend no one if I say that in twenty years I have not seen any
young Missionary in India whose life seemed to me to promise
more/ This was in 1902. Kellett died in 1904, and in 1906
yet another young Missionary of exceptional power was taken
away. The Rev. H. W. Raw had not the scholarship of the
two just mentioned, but in devotion and in unselfish labour
he was worthy of standing with them. In 1906 an alarming
outbreak of cholera took place in Madras, and Raw was
unsparing in watching over the flock committed to his care,
with the result that not one of them was attacked. But in
his care for them he was exposed to infection, and the disease
quickly ran its course. Thus within the space of four years
three young Missionaries of exceptional promise were taken
away. The District was sorely bereaved.

Side by side with the extension of work beyond the environs
of Madras an intensive work had gone on in the older Circuits
within the city. The Royapetta chapel was enlarged in

240 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

1905 at a cost of three hundred pounds, all but forty of which
was raised by the congregation. In the Madras North Circuit
the chapel, incommodious and, because of its position, unsuit
able for worship, was replaced by a new chapel three times as
large and attractive in appearance. There was also a move
ment in favour of building a similar chapel at Pursewalkam,
a neighbourhood in which many Tamil Christians resided.
But more significant than this was the growth of the living
Church into the freedom and power of maturer life. Both
of the Circuits in Madras became self-supporting in 1902.
Their stewards were in consequence admitted to the adminis
trative and financial sessions of the Synod. This gave an
increased sense of responsibility to the Indian Ministers in
charge, and among the members the spirit of co-operation
with the Ministry was greatly furthered. The indigenous
Church was now no longer a dream, and the Church, rejoicing
in its independence, at once began to undertake missionary
work on its own initiative. A District Sustentation Fund and
a District Extension Fund, the one to assist other Circuits
in the direction of self-support and the other to promote
evangelistic work among those who were still out of the way,
were both set up and worked by Christian laymen. The
organization of the Methodist Church was now well on the way
to completeness, but it still remained an open question what
modifications of the system which obtained in England could
be grafted on to Church life in India, and whether the Churches
in India could at this stage enter upon all the privileges and
responsibilities which characterize Circuit life in England.

Such questions, however, could be trusted to work out
their own solution so long as the life is true to its source and
keeps its goal steadily in view. The forms of Church organiza
tion may differ in the East from those that are familiar to all
in the West, yet the meaning and purpose may be the same
as those which have given to the Methodist Church both its
place and its power.

At the close of 1902 the Decennial Conference of Missionaries
in India, Burma, and Ceylon was held in Madras. The
number of delegates who attended was two hundred and
ninety. These represented every phase of work attempted
by the Church and a great variety of racial affinities. So
varied and so vast were the matters to be discussed that it

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 241

was found necessary for each question to be dealt with in
preliminary Committees, the resolutions of which were pre
sented to the Conference for discussion, amendment, and
acceptance. It would cover many pages of this record if we
were to attempt anything approaching a detailed account of
the resolutions of this Conference, and yet whether we consider
them as marking the stages reached by the Methodist Church,
or as the bases for new enterprise, they are historical documents
of first importance. A mere enumeration of them will suggest
to our readers how far-reaching are the issues involved and
how complicated are the problems which await the Church
when it accepts the responsibility of evangelizing a country
like India.

There was the question of the Indian Church now approach
ing adolescence, and, in some districts, maturity. To what
extent could that Church be trusted with autonomy, and what
should be the relations between the indigenous and the
European Ministries? How far was it wise to organize the
Church on bases that had proved of value in the West ? To
what extent would it be safe to go in seeking a more Oriental
element in Church organization ? Did the large accessions
from the Panchama class of Hindu society mean 'the pro-
letariatizing of the Church/ and did such accessions make the
approach of other classes more difficult ? Had the time come
for the Church to fall into line with the trend of thought and
feeling in political circles, and, following on the lines of self-
determination, to establish a ' National Church/ in which all
denominational characteristics might be merged?

The next question was that of evangelistic work. Was it
true that ' the Brahman has had his day/ and no further
appeal should be made to him ? What were the best methods
of conducting this work? Should the Church adopt the
method of the itinerating evangelist ? Or was a more local,
continuous, and concentrated effort likely to be of greater
value ? How far should this work be attempted by the
European ? How far could it be left to the Indian evangelist ?

Education. Did the money spent in this department and
that spent in village evangelism stand in due proportion?
What was the limit to be observed ? Did the school necessitate
the college ? And ought not every educational establishment
to have as a sequel to its effort an institute in which the

242 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

preparation of the mind accomplished in the School might
be followed by more direct appeals for decision? Women's
work came next, with the closely associated branch of medical
work. Industry and literature were matters of immense
importance in a Church the members of which had been so
severely restricted in the one and entirely neglected in the
other. Last of all came the question of Mission comity in a
country in which practically all Christian denominations
were represented by missionary workers, while not a few were
to be found at work who recognized no distinctive Church
organization, but were individualistic, and therefore irre
sponsible, in their efforts.

Such were the questions with which this great Conference
dealt. Towards its close it adopted a manifesto to the
Societies represented, and while the general tenor of this is
one of grateful recognition of the blessing of God on the work
of His Church, there are at least two clauses which touch the
Methodist Church closely. In the former of these the inade
quacy of the missionary staff for the work of evangelizing
India is set before the Societies, and the Conference declares
that ' It is the opinion of sober and thoughtful and zealous
men that in order to carry on thoroughly the work now in
hand, and to enter the most obviously open doors which God
has set before His Church in India, the Missionary staff in the
country should be at least doubled within the next ten years.'
It is for the Methodist Church to say how far it has complied
with this judgement of those who knew best the conditions
of the work before the Church in India. To say nothing of
the need of obeying the call of God, compliance with this
resolution is necessary for the conserving of lives that are
efficient and productive of the highest good. To take an
illustration from the history of the District before us in this
chapter, we would revert to the early death of one of the
ablest and most devoted Missionaries ever called by God to
labour in India. F. W. Kellett felt the burden of Hindu
students lie heavily on his heart. Time after time for many
years the Madras Synod had urged the home Committee
to take up this work, but each time the Church failed to
respond. Kellett was already carrying a burden of work
which would have exhausted three men of average capacity,
but when the Church did not answer that urgent call lie

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 243

added the work in the Triplicane Institute to his already
excessive burden. When his colleague, Cocks, was taken
from his side, he continued that work alone. Then he came
home to die. The historian contemplating such events can
but wonder when the Church will awake to the fact that often
its most efficient servants are borne down by toil, and that the
observance of mere economy should make that Church insist
upon relief being both given and accepted.

The second clause in the manifesto to which reference must
here be made is that in which an appeal is made for voluntary
service on the part of those who have the means of self-support.
' We would appeal to Ministers and educationists, and other
men of scholarship, to doctors and nurses, to writers and
journalists, to men of organizing power and business experi
ence, to Christian ladies and gentlemen possessed of private
pecuniary resources, to ask themselves whether they cannot
hear a call of God to this work.' The Methodist Church may
well give heed to such an appeal. It is able to respond
adequately if it have the heart to do so.

But we must turn from questions of policy to the men who
administered it, and reference should be made to some of the
Chairmen of the District during the latter part of the century.
At the beginning of the 'eighties Henry Little was Chairman
of the two divisions of the District. As we have seen, he
became Chairman of the Nepagatam District when that
District became independent. In Madras the Rev. George
Patterson was appointed to act as Chairman, but on the return
of the Rev. James Cooling from furlough in 1888 the office
was handed over to him, and from that time until his death
in 1915 he was, except during intervals of furlough, the
Chairman of the District. He had joined the staff in 1876,
and during the first period of his service he was wholly engaged
in educational work in Royapetta. James Cooling was one
of the most unobtrusive of men, but behind his innate modesty
there were ranged powers of no mean order. Few could
equal him in the grasp of details and in the power of co
ordinating them, relating each to principles that were perfectly
clear to his mind. His judgement was always sound, and both
in the Synods of the Church and in the Senate of the University
it always carried weight. Men came to see that they might
safely rely upon him, and he received the suffrage of all who

244 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

came under his administration. Few Missionaries have been
more trusted by Indian colleagues, and that is not the least
tribute to his wisdom, his unselfishness, and his sympathy.
It was given to him to preside over the Synods of the District
during the years in which its former depression passed away,
and the Methodist Church in Madras entered upon its long-
deferred season of harvest. How much of the wisdom with
which the Church was guided during the perilous time of
prosperity was due to him will never be known, for he was not
the man to claim any share in the general success, and those
who shared his counsels in those days have also passed away,
but there is no doubt that the combination in him of caution
and yet of progressiveness was invaluable at a time when the
Church embarked upon an enterprise the issues of which still
remain incalculable. In the official record of his service it is
said that ' No man ever served the Society more faithfully,
and few more ably/ That record is true.

The Missionaries who joined the staff of the Madras District
after 1900 were the Revs. D. G. M. Leith (1901), J. P. Shrimpton
(1902), G. P. Gibbens (1903), J- E- Nei11 (I9o5). J- s- M-
Hooper (1905), R. F. Burrow (1907), G. H. Findlay (1907),
C. W. Hickson (1908), H. Ashcroft (1908), J. Passmore (1909),
W. A. Kirkman (1911). Of these many are still on the field

in 1923.

The period during which the Madras District began to
reap its abundant harvest saw also the gradual formation of
an Indian Ministry characterized by zeal, ability, and devotion.
In a letter written by William Goudie in 1887 he refers to the
need, which he saw was likely to become most urgent, of an
increased and better qualified supply of pastors, teachers,
and evangelists, and then he touches upon what had been
the weakness of the District when he says :

We have depended long enough on the malcontents of other Missions,
and must look to providing and training our own. It is in my opinion
desirable to be patient and advance slowly, working with men whom
we have brought up and on whom we can rely, rather than to move
quickly, depending on men who have come to us only yesterday, come
to us for hire and ready to leave us to-morrow at the call of any higher
bidder.

Happily the Indian Ministry of the succeeding years was one
which fulfilled his heart's desire. Most of them were men who

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 245

gladdened the hearts of their European brethren in the service
of Christ, and some were conspicuous in adding to great
mental gifts and force of character a rich spiritual experience
which made them Pastors of great influence in their respective
Churches.

With a Ministry of this quality it is no wonder that the
harvesting proceeded apace, and that the older Churches, as
well as those newly formed in the villages, felt the tide of
strong and healthy life course through the channels of their
organization. Of the training of these, and of the large
number of Catechists and teachers required as the work in
the villages increased, we have written elsewhere,1 and we
must here content ourselves with recording that in the Cen
tenary year there were in the District seventeen Indian
Ministers, forty-eight Catechists, and two hundred and sixty-
seven teachers. These are numbers which put the Madras
District well in advance of all other Districts in India in the
all-important matter of Christian agency.

Before we close this chapter of our record we must, however,
briefly consider the development of the two chief centres of
village work during the decade immediately preceding the
Centenary of the Society. The Church in Madurantakam
will always be associated with the name of W. B. Simpson,
the worthy son of a worthy father. Hither he came, as we
have seen, in 1889, to find that his new field was ' virgin soil.'
Eight years before work had been commenced here, and a
small congregation of twenty persons was transferred from
another Society to ours, but there had been nothing approach
ing ' effective occupation/ and such work as was attempted
was carried on mostly in the schools, of which there were
three, one for girls, and two, a primary and a high school,
for boys. There were more than five hundred villages in the
Madurantakam Taluk, and into these went the warm-hearted
Missionary, with his great gift of friendliness and with his
love for Christ. In 1894 the Training Institution was removed
to Madurantakam, and two years after Simpson had the joy
of presenting as candidates for the Ministry T. Subrahmanyam
and Devadasan David, while three others were passed into
the grade of Probationary Evangelists. A home for destitute
children was also added to the spheres of influence in the

»See p. 167.

246

Circuit. Even in the space of two years the membership of
the Church had trebled, and there were indications of still
larger increase in the villages. But in 1897 a great blow fell
upon the Circuit. Simpson was compelled, owing to the
failure of Mrs. Simpson's health, to return to England. His
influence as founder of the Mission in this centre was so unique
that it was feared for a time that the growth of the Church
would suffer a severe check. Happily this fear proved to
be unfounded. The increase continued and was accelerated.
In 1902 the membership was more than a hundred. The
second hundred was reached in 1907, and in the Centenary
year there were in this Circuit three hundred members in full
fellowship, with two hundred and forty-five on probation ; the
Circuit thus standing, in point of numbers, next to Tiruvallur
and Madras South, and giving every promise of still further
growth. The joy of gathering these persons into the Church
fell to Simpson's successors, A. C. Clayton and R. E. Grieves.

To Simpson what seemed to be the close of his Ministry
in India was a great disappointment, but the Missionary in
him would not be denied, and in 1903 he offered to return and
to serve in the Tamil Districts of South India for three years,
leaving wife and children in England. The service which
followed was quite unique in the history of the Madras District.
Together with his friend and colleague, the Rev. T. Subrah-
manyam, Mr. Kuppuswami Row, and one or two others he
itinerated in the Madras District, in Negapatam, Bangalore,
Secunderabad, and Ootacamund, seeking in each place to
deepen the spiritual life of the Tamil Churches. In this he
was markedly successful, and many who were Christians in
name entered into such an experience of the power of Christ
in their own lives as they had never known before. The last
year of the three was given to the holding of conventions
for Hindus in each of the cities already mentioned, and while
results in this series of services could not be so easily seen,
the work done by these Missionaries can never remain without
result. At the close of the three years Simpson returned to
England and took up work again in an English Circuit, but
this was not for long. The call came to him almost as
suddenly as it had come to his father, and so he passed — a
man with a big heart overflowing with love for all men, but
most of all for the sons and daughters of India.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 247

Meantime Goudie had not been idle at Tiruvallur. His
iron constitution enabled him to accomplish what was far
beyond the power of other men. His long and tireless stride
carried him over the tracks that led to distant villages, where
men would fain learn what God's thought for them might be in
Christ. After those shepherdless sheep in the wilderness
went the shepherd who was to bring them help. ' His own
thought drove him like a goad/ but that thought was occupied
with but one object — the uplifting of the fallen, the champion
ing of the friendless, the proclaiming to Pariah and to Brahman
the dignity of manhood and its fulfilment in Christ. In 1892
he was again on furlough, and his amazing utterance greatly
moved the Church at home. It was ' amazing,' for the volu
minous flow was more than mere volubility. There was
thought and force and passion in his plea for the Pariah.
When he returned he set to work to consolidate all that had
been done, and to erect suitable homes for the many agencies
of the Church. It is impossible within the limits of these
pages to trace the work in Tiruvallur in anything like detail.
Some idea of its development may be gathered from the mere
numerical increase. In 1890 there were ninety-six Church
members in the Circuit, with as many more on probation.
In 1900 the numbers were three hundred and eighty-four and
two hundred and eighty-seven, and in 1910 there were six
hundred and sixteen full members and four hundred and
forty-seven on trial, while at Nagari, which was an offset
from this Circuit, there was a Christian community of two
hundred more. The pastoral work entailed was very great,
for Goudie was far too wise to ignore the peril of admitting
men into the Church without securing for them some measure
of instruction in Christian truth, and without making some
effort to build them up into a worthy Christian life. Ikkadu
became a centre of extraordinary Christian activity, and that
within the years of one man's service there should have arisen
the homes in which that activity was exercised was a matter
which brought both joy and surprise to all who contemplated
the fact. In 1904 we find the following enumerated : A
Mission House, a Hospital, the Burnham Children's Home,
the Southern Cross Home, the Lace Hall, and ' a beautiful
Chapel, strong and shapely.' When Goudie first came to
Ikkadu, the only place of worship was a mud hut, thatched

248 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

with leaves, and standing within the unwholesome precincts
of the Parcheri. That was in 1889, so that within fifteen
years all these substantial buildings had been erected. The
Mission was splendidly housed, and the despised Pariah, who
had no place within the temple of Tiruvallur, and was not
allowed to enter within the walls of a Court of Justice, even
when his case was before the magistrate, now found himself
freely admitted to the privileges of social life, to civilizing
conditions, and to his place within the house where God's
honour dwelleth.

Two of the buildings mentioned call for special notice.
Part of the ' edification ' of the Church consisted in providing
its members with employment that was free from the degrada
tion to which they had been subjected. To do this for the
women was specially difficult. In 1894 Miss Priestnal (after
wards Mrs. A. C. Clayton) came from England to begin the
work among women, and the industry of lace-making was
taken up, not as a charity, but on well-defined business
principles. The industry was well chosen. It was within
the compass of the women, and by its very nature brought an
element of refinement and artistry into lives that had been
wholly destitute of such things. The contrast between the
women who took up this work, sitting in a decent room with
clean garments and hands at their cushions, and those of
their sisters who still remained engaged in work which
coarsened both body and mind, had to be seen before it could
be fully appreciated, and in their midst, imparting skill to
their fingers, and bringing to bear upon them the countless
charms of Christian womanhood, moved their teacher with a
heart full of love for her sisters in Christ. Lest any of our
readers should be tempted to think that directly religious
influence does not go with such industry, we invite them to
read the article written by Mr. Monahan which appeared in
the Notices of 1901, and entitled ' Pentecost in a Parcheri.'
A single sentence is all that we may include in our pages :

The wonderful change that has taken place amongst the women
would have been impossible but for the work that Mrs. Clayton — then
Miss Priestnal — and Miss Scott have been doing amongst them for
the past six or seven years. Some of those who have been converted
were once out-and-out ' children of the devil.'

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 249

In 1901 Mr. May of Bristol built the ' Lace Hall ' in memory
of his daughter, the late Mrs. Wood of Sheffield. It is a
beautiful memorial of a beautiful life.

The other building which we must notice is ' The Southern
Cross Home for Boys.' In Melbourne Dr. Fitchett — a name
known far outside the boundaries of the Methodist Church-
was at one time the editor of a religious journal known by the
name of The Southern Cross. Mrs. Fiddian, an Australian
lady who had married a distinguished officer in the Indian
Civil Service, and who was well acquainted with our work in
South India, suggested to Dr. Fitchett that the readers of
his journal might provide a home for the boys of the Tiru-
vallur Circuit. The matter was taken up with ready enthu
siasm, and the Methodists of Melbourne were thus linked with
the Methodists of Ikkadu. Such links are no fetters. They
are rather the connexion through which the thrill of life
passes from end to end of the Methodist Church. It is thus
that in Christ ' the whole body fitly framed and knit together
through that which every joint supplieth, according to the
working in due measure of each several part, maketh the
increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.'

The medical work in Ikkadu was not the least valuable of
all that was undertaken here, but of this we shall speak in the
section of this History which deals with medical work in all
the Districts.

The growth of the Church in the Tiruvallur Circuit, with
out-stations so far apart, made the question of division an
urgent one, and after some hesitation in considering the claims
of other towns it was decided that the new centre should be
at Nagari, a large market-town about thirty-four miles from
Tiruvallur. Nagari first appears in the report as a separate
Circuit in 1907, with the Rev. G. Percy Gibbens as its Superin
tendent. The town had previously been visited from Tiru
vallur, and a Christian Church had come into being. This
consisted of a hundred members, with a hundred and fifty
others passing through their period of probation. Medical
work had been done here also by lady doctors from Ikkadu,
and it was an immense convenience to them when a Dispen
sary, the gift of an Indian lady, a member of the Church in
Madras, was opened in 1908.

In 1906 the time came for William Goudie to return to

250 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

England, and it is difficult to say who suffered more by his
departure from the work he had begun — the people who thus
lost their friend and their guide from bondage into freedom,
or the guide himself. They were indeed to see his face again,
and the reception which he received when he returned as
Missionary Secretary in 1920 was one which princes might
have been proud to accept. He was followed as Superintendent
by the Rev. C. H. Monahan, who worthily continued the work
begun by his predecessor. The Church continued to grow,
and in 1913, if we include the members at Nagari, there were
seven hundred and eighty fully accredited members in a
Circuit in which Goudie found but fifty-three, when he first
commenced his most fruitful ministry in 1889.

In looking back over the history of the Methodist Church in
Madras during the hundred years of its existence, we cannot
fail to be impressed with the happy contrast between its
temper and outlook during the first fifty years, and that which
characterized it during the second half of the century. For
more than fifty years the Church was limited almost entirely
to English residents in the city of Madras. Its Tamil element
was slender and entirely without influence in the life of the
community. There was no Indian Ministry. If during the
'fifties it had disappeared, scarcely a ripple on the surface of
that life would have remained to show that a goodly ship had
foundered there. The European Missionaries resembled the
crew on a ship that is ' water-logged.' They could record no
movement, and had little prospect of it, in the vessel in which
their hope was embarked. It they did not apologize for their
existence, they were often apprehensive that existence itself
might cease. And yet the closing years of the century reveal
to us a Church full of life. It had both movement and power.
Force and vision characterized its operations. It was com
prehensive in the agencies it employed, and a spirit of intensity
made itself felt in every enterprise. Breadth and depth
were equally apparent in its work. Nor was height lacking
in it. With one hand it was reaching down to the all but
bottomless pit into which the Pariah had fallen, and with the
other it laid hold upon God, the source of its uplifting power.

The student of history will notice that the earliest signs of

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 251

improvement appeared in the 'eighties. Applying the test
of Church membership he will find that while in 1880 there
were two hundred and fifty-six Native members and two
Indian Ministers, in 1913 there were two thousand two hundred
and forty-two members and seventeen Indian Ministers, while in
addition there were more than twelve hundred persons on
probation for admission into full membership. The student
will also notice that it was in the 'eighties that the Church
broke away from the entanglements of city life and began to
work among the villages. But it would be a mistake to attri
bute this sudden growth entirely to the accessions found in
the villages. The work among these had its reaction upon
the work in the city. With the coming of hope, energy had
increased in the longer established centres of the Mission in
Madras. The membership at Royapetta had quadrupled,
and the Church was self-supporting. There were Churches
of more than a hundred members in both Georgetown and
Pursewalkam. Throughout the whole District the pulse of
life was regular and strong.

What was the cause of this sudden and wonderful growth ?
We shall not forget that God has His purposes, and His ' set
time ' for their fulfilment ; that His Spirit ' bloweth where
it listeth.' But when we consider the human agency employed
we are bound to take into consideration the fact that this
development began with the coming of two men into the
work, and that they were able to move out into the villages.
It was Mackenzie Cobban who showed the way out of the
house of bondage, and it was William Goudie who led God's
Israel into the promised land. It is no disparagement of
others who laboured with equal devotion, and at a time when
circumstances did not allow of enlargement, to connect with
the special service of these two the bounteous harvest which
has at last rejoiced the heart of the Methodist Church. Each
had vision and force of character. Each was consumed with
passion for humanity in Christ. And each had a heart which,
like the heart of the Eternal, was ' most wonderfully kind ' !

When the Centenary of the Society was celebrated in
England there was a poetic fitness in the appointing of William
Goudie to organize that celebration. In the wisdom and
providence of God, it was largely he who had brought the
work of James Lynch to good effect. During the course of

252 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

that celebration he had much to say to the Church, but it was
out of the abundance of his heart that he spoke, and never
a word of that wonderful utterance was lacking in conviction
and sincerity. The conception of this History was part of
his scheme for a worthy recognition of the way in which God
had honoured the service of a great multitude of His servants,
so many of whom had been faithful unto death. The Church
honoured the service of this great Missionary by electing him
to preside over its assemblies. But God had other thoughts
for His servant and called him to honour more abundant.
He died suddenly on April 9, 1922.

We shall build his memorial in Tiruvallur, where so often
he confronted the pride of Brahmanism, and meekly endured
its insults, but his greatest memorial will be found in the
living Church which under the guidance and blessing of God
he led into the freedom with which Christ makes His people
free.

If the ' Kingdom of Heaven ' means, as we have been taught,
' the unseen spiritual laws by which God governs and blesses
His creatures/ then the Parable of the Kingdom which finds
its illustration in the story of the Methodist Church in Madras
is the Parable of the Sower. The Sowers of the seed for a
hundred years found every detail of our Lord's Parable to
be true to fact. They knew of the shallow soil which quickly
responded in a superficial allegiance which as quickly withered
away. They sowed where the enemies of their holy husbandry
destroyed that which had in itself the secret of life, and their
thorny patches met them everywhere. But they came at
last to hearts that were receptive. The harvest was abundant,
and the fruits of the Spirit gladdened the sowers' hearts.
Many had gone forth weeping to the village or the school
where they cast the seed of the Kingdom of God, but they
came again transfigured in a rejoicing Church.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 253

(ii.) THE NEGAPATAM AND TRICHINOPOLY DISTRICT : 'THE

DRAW-NET '

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God is
ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

The Kingdom of God is like unto a draw-net which was cast into the
sea and gathered of every kind, which when it was filled they drew up
on the beach ; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels,
but the bad they cast away. — MATT. xiii. 47.

The story of the following chapter shows the gathering in to the
Church of Christ of men from very diverse classes, Romanists, Brah-
mans, Sudras, and Pariahs. Of these some have remained ; others
have been ' cast away.'

The early history of what we now know as ' the Negapatam
and Trichinopoly District ' has already been before our
attention. Up to the year 1885 it formed the southern
section of the Madras District, and as such its story is closely
interwoven with that of the Church in Madras. At the time of
separation there were four chief centres of work with a small
cluster of out-stations attached to each. The Rev. W. H
Findlay was then the only European Missionary in Negapatam,
where he had charge of the educational department. The
pastorate of the Native Church and the evangelizing of the
villages round this centre devolved upon the Rev. A. Wesley
Samuel, but the general superintendence of the whole work
rested upon Mr. Findlay. This excessive burden was relieved
in the following year by the appointment of the Rev. J. M.
Thompson to take charge of the vernacular work, and by that
of the Rev. A. A. Thomas to assist Mr. Findlay in the high
school, which had then been raised to the rank of a second-
grade college.

The second Circuit in the District was Manargudi, and here
we find the Revs. T. F. Nicholson and E. P. Blackburn, but
in the following year the former had returned to England, and
the latter was transferred to Trichinopoly. Manargudi was
left to the superintendence of a Missionary who had joined
the staff that same year — the Rev. E. Woodward.

254 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

In Trichinopoly the Cantonment Circuit was without a
Missionary. The vacancy was filled as we have indicated
by the appointment of the Rev. E. P. Blackburn, but for the
year 1885 the Rev. R. S. Boulter was in charge of the two
Circuits in this large city.

The remaining Circuit was that of Karur, where the Chair
man, the Rev. H. Little, resided. He was assisted in the work
of the orphanage and in general Circuit work by the Rev.
F. W. Gostick.

Of Indian Ministers there still remained on this field those
well-tried and most faithful servants of the Church, the Revs.
E. J. Gloria and George Hobday. The former had entered
the Ministry in 1854 and the latter three years after. Gloria
passed to his reward in 1895, leaving behind him a name for
efficiency as a preacher in Tamil and as possessing a distinct
gift in poetry. The latter gift was shown in his editing of
the Tamil hymn-book. Hobday lived until 1912, having spent
the last twelve years of his life in retirement at Ootacamund.
He too was a most effective preacher in Tamil, and was a
man of peculiar force and independence. Such was the staff
of the new District in 1885. The Church membership was
four hundred and thirty-two, of which number one hundred
and thirty were to be found in Karur.

Two years later the home Committee evidently considered
the further division of the District, but this suggestion of
theirs was thought to be premature by the men on the
spot, unless the Committee was prepared to increase its staff
in both sections and to make a considerable addition to its
financial grant. In common with the other Districts in
India Negapatain had received considerable increments in
this last as a result of the Secretarial visit of the Rev. Dr.
Jenkins in 1884. Ten vernacular schools received an annual
grant of ten pounds each, and an increment of two hundred
pounds a year was made towards raising the high school at
Negapatam to the grade of a college. About this time too it
was being considered whether Manargudi was not likely to
prove a better centre for higher educational work than Nega
patam, and in 1898 the college was removed to that centre,
with results which will be recorded in due course. In addition
to these educational grants there was a welcome addition
of fifty pounds on behalf of the Indian Ministry, and the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 255

sum of fourteen hundred pounds for ' Plant.' This latter
was greatly needed, and indeed for years afterwards the
Mission buildings in this District left much to be desired. So
late as 1909 an experienced Missionary of another Society
said to the Rev. W. S. Dodd : ' If the Holy Spirit works in
the buildings you have in your Circuit, it is a miracle of grace.'

Perhaps the most hopeful work in the new District in 1885
was to be found at Karur, and of the industrial development
in that Circuit we have written in another chapter.1 Henry
Little's success in this department must have been most
gratifying to him, but it was not allowed to obscure the goal
which he had in view. His great concern gathered round
the evangelization of the villages. In 1889 we find him
touring in the Konga-nad, a district to the south of Karur,
and choosing centres for evangelistic work. Two of these
were Dharapuram and Kangayam, and others were chosen
with the eye of a strategist and the heart of an evangelist.
In most of these the work was dropped after a few years, and
Kangayam was handed over to the London Missionary Society.
The sequel is full of instruction for the Methodist Church, and
though its most impressive features belong to a period sub
sequent to that which is covered by our record a reference to
it may be allowed. The Local Report for 1922 shows a
Christian community in Dharapuram alone of three thousand
five hundred and fifty-seven, with nearly twelve hundred
others under instruction with a view to baptism. The move
ment towards the Christian Church indicated by these figures,
which are understated, obtains throughout the whole of the
Konga-nad, in which district some two millions of people
are to be found, and it is said that ' within a few years the
whole of this village population should be gathered in, and
others will certainly follow.'

But let us now return to Henry Little touring in a bullock-
cart through this same area in 1889. Twenty years had passed
since he first came to India, and they had been years of all
but continuous disappointment, often of vexation of spirit.
The field which had fallen to him was one of peculiar difficulty.
Hinduism was entrenched in positions which were apparently
impregnable. The very temples, vast, elaborate, and wealthy,
seemed to mock at the puny efforts of the Missionary finding

1 See pp. 161 &.

256 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

his house of prayer in a thatched shed. Caste influence was
at its strongest here, and like some indigenous weed threatened
continually to invade the vineyard of the Lord and to destroy
the Christian fellowship that was slowly forming. But the
Missionary never lost heart. His confidence in the triumph of
the Gospel of Christ remained unshaken, and he ' staked out
his claim ' in the Konga-nad in the Name of Christ. But the
Church, which had commissioned him to do this very service,
failed in its support. One after another the villages he had
claimed for Christ were abandoned, and only after twenty
years have passed is his prescience justified and his hope
fulfilled. The Methodist Church of to-day rejoices in an
overflowing harvest gathered in what seemed to be the least
fertile field in India, but that Church may well ask what her
harvest might have been if she had given a worthy response
to the Missionary lying awake in the jolting cart, and thinking
all through the hot and breathless night of the people to be
won for Christ in the Konga-nad.

In the educational work of the District W. H. Findlay had
already a position of great influence. He had joined the
staff in 1882, and was appointed to take charge of the high
school in Negapatam, where the quality of his scholarship
soon made him widely known and greatly respected. But
by the time he had been four years in the country he found
himself burdened with the superintendence of the Circuit,
and until the close of the year 1899 he had only one colleague—
a young Missionary of two years' experience.

The Church needs to visualize the burden thus placed upon
one of the most gifted of her servants. The high school was
quickly raised to the grade of a college, and this alone was
considered a sufficient charge for a single Missionary, but we
must add to it the care and oversight of the English and
Tamil Churches in the city and all the elementary schools of
the Circuit. In 1886 in Negapatam alone, to say nothing of
the schools in the villages, there were twelve of these, each
with its demand upon the administrative care of the Superin
tendent. Then there was the work of preaching in the streets
of Negapatam, and visits to the surrounding villages for
evangelistic purposes. Findlay was never very robust, but
it is to be feared that this outrageously excessive burden
completely undermined his strength. There was no elasticity

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 257

left in his physique ; he had been strained beyond the limits
of a perfect recovery. For his most sensitive and most
conscientious nature made it impossible for him to ' take
things easily ' ; the intensity which characterized both his
thought and his emotion kept him at full stretch, and a richly
stored mind and a generous heart were never able to give forth
all the treasure they held. So much as he was able to give,
and it was no small measure, may remind the Church of what
it has lost through its own failure to use wisely what was
given so unstintingly. In 1890 he was recalled to England to
give evidence on behalf of his fellow Missionaries in the unhappy
' controversy ' of that year, and while in England he was able
to secure for the Negapatam College the service of the Rev.
E. E. Webster as Principal and of Mr. W. W. Sawtell as Vice-
Principal. In 1892, on the retirement of the Rev. Henry
Little, he was made Chairman of the District, and continued
to serve in that capacity for eight years more, when, on his
return to England he was elected by the Conference to the
office of Secretary to the Society. This office he held until 1910.

The foundation of the college in Negapatam was due to
him, and when, as we shall see presently, the college depart
ment was transferred to Manargudi it was in recognition of
the part he had played in its earlier history that his name
was given to that college.

It must not be supposed that Findlay did not recognize
that the situation in Negapatam during the 'eighties was
unfair. ' Unfair ' — not to himself, though from our point
of view that was true — but unfair to the work. In a clear
and vigorous letter which he wrote in 1892 he says, with the
somewhat whimsical humour which he so often used,

' Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it feebly,' appears to be our
motto. We have been content as a Society with a desultory scattering
of the seed, that may go on, as at Negapatam, for seventy years without
producing any obvious and considerable effect on the town and neigh
bourhood; it is time we made plans like practical men, set before
ourselves definite aims, and calculated the means required to accomplish
them, and then applied those means. Do not think I am merely
lamenting over the straitness of the Society's funds, and trying to
rouse you to increased generosity. What the Society needs more than
increased funds, it seems to me, is increased understanding.

In the ' Official Letter ' of 1887, in which his hand can be
17

258 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

clearly seen, he shows with unsparing clearness the contradic
tion between words and deeds in the policy of the Committee.

' During recent years Native Agency — Ministers, Evangelists,
Catechists — has been multiplied manifold. This is a policy urged by
the Committee on the score of efficiency and economy, yet the Com
mittee has cut down the grant for the Training Institution to fifty
pounds. . . .

' Compactness of disposition and thoroughness of working,' this is
the policy that you suggest to us, and that we aspire to follow ; and
when our Stations are so linked together and so strongly manned that
this ideal shall be attained ; when our District shall have its twenty
Missionaries to the million instead of two ; when you shall have sent
forth as strong a force against the huge population that surrounds us
as your fathers and ours sent against the few thousands of Fiji, or as
you are now sending against the few myriads of Ceylon ; in that day
we have not the least doubt that we shall see the Kingdom of God
come with power.

It is to be questioned whether the Church in England had
grasped the conditions imposed upon Missionaries by the mere
fact of population. As Findlay said, what was wanted was
' more understanding.'

Another Circuit in this District to which our attention
must now be turned is Tiruvalur, of which frequent mention
has been made in an earlier chapter. It had been decided
to set up a Medical Mission at this centre, and in 1887 Mr. R. H.
Crane, a Native Christian apothecary holding a Government
certificate, was appointed to prepare the way for the Rev. H. S.
Lunn, M.D., who was then on his way to take up this work.
It seemed that there was presented here a providential opening
for a Medical Mission. The land required was already in
possession, with a house suitable for a European standing
vacant upon it. Easy communications by rail with Negapatam,
Tanjore, and Kumbhakonam would greatly enlarge the scope
of such an agency. The outlook was one of peculiar hopeful
ness, and the happiest anticipations filled the hearts of the
Missionaries. It was thought that later on it might be found
desirable to make Kumbhakonam the centre of this work, but
that a start might be made at Tiruvalur. Kumbhakonam
was a large and populous city, a stronghold of Brahmanism
and hitherto untouched by any Christian agency. But
during his first year in the country Dr. Lunn — now Sir Henry
Lunn — suffered from attacks of fever, and he urged the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 259

Committee to make Kumbhakonam the centre at once ; he
therefore asked for special grants to be made towards the
establishing and maintenance of a Medical Mission in this
city. The Committee at once voted ten thousand rupees for
this purpose, with an additional allowance of a hundred pounds
a year for maintenance. But before any beginning could
be made at Kumbhakonam, and without completing one year of
service, Dr. Lunn returned to England on the ground of
health failure. The unhappy Missionary controversy which
followed has been so fully dealt with in Vol. I of this History1
that no further reference to it is necessary here. The hopes
and anticipations with which this projected service had been
accompanied were dashed to the ground, a considerable
expenditure of funds, sorely needed in other parts of the
District, had been made to no purpose, and for many months
the hearts of the Missionaries had been saddened.

The work, however, was not abandoned. In 1889 the Rev.
H. Hudson, who held medical diplomas, joined the staff, and
made a fresh start. For some time tentative work was taken
up at both Tiruvalur and Trichinopoly, but in 1893 it was
decided to make Manargudi the medical centre. Here Dr.
Hudson laboured until 1899, when ill-health compelled his
return to England. By that time the Rev. Elias Daniel, an
Indian Minister, who had received medical training under
Hudson's tuition, was able to take up the work, and in the
Centenary year he was still engaged in this service. The
medical work at Manargudi is the only medical work in India
which is carried on directly under the auspices of the Missionary
Committee,2 all other hospitals and dispensaries being under
the direction of the Women's Auxiliary. It has never reached
the point of efficiency or the range of operation expected at
the time of its inception. It may be that future days will
bring the fulfilment of many hopes in this connexion.

In the 'eighties the Methodist Church at Trichinopoly did
not show many signs of growth. As we write these signs are
abundant, but for many years such increase as was from time
to time recorded resulted mostly from among those who were
members of the Church of Rome. Trichinopoly was one of
the great centres of Xavier, and in many of the villages round

1 Vol. I. pp. 142 ff.

*The medical work at Sarenga was begun after the Centenary year.

260 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

his converts were to be found. As a rule their ignorance and
superstition were as great as that of their non-Christian neigh
bours, and infinite patience was demanded in the instruction
of those who for one reason or another decided to abandon
the Roman Church and to enter the Protestant fellowship.
Trichinopoly was in point of population second only to Madras
in South India, and again the Missionaries stationed here
were overwhelmed by the sense of a vast population which
they could not hope to evangelize. At one time the presence
of British soldiers, forming the garrison of the Fort, brought to
the Missionaries a further limitation of their powers in evangeliz
ing the Hindu people by reason of the time and labour spent
in ministering to their spiritual needs, and after their removal
a small English congregation remained. In work among the
surrounding villages a hopeful centre was found in Porathakudi,
where the population was largely composed of Romanists,
and after the baptism of a hundred and twenty persons an
Indian Minister was appointed to this village in 1898. Both
here and in the village of Alithorei, the gathered fruit was in
the main the product of a faithful Christian of the name of
Daniel. He was an evangelist of rich experience and of most
fruitful service. The influence he wielded, especially among the
young men of the villages, was very remarkable. Many a
villager in after days spoke of himself as ' one of Daniel's
converts.'

For some years a training institution had been maintained
at Trichinopoly. It was never very large, but while it remained
in existence it served a useful purpose, and some of the best
evangelists in the District were trained in it. Two of these
afterwards entered the Ministry. In 1899 it was still in being,
with the Rev. J. S. Wesley Shrewsbury acting as Principal,
but at the close of that year the health of Mrs. Shrewsbury
was such that both were obliged to return to England, and the
training institution disappeared from the pages of the annual
Report. The District was unable to maintain such a supply
of students as would justify their setting apart a man for this
work.

The decade of the 'nineties was one of hard struggle. The
staff was depleted, and as the remaining Missionaries took up
the extra burden, cases of ' breakdown ' naturally followed.
In 1896, of the seven Missionaries on this field three were still

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 261

learning Tamil, so that the vernacular work of the District —
so far as European Missionaries were concerned — fell upon
four men, one of whom was the Chairman, the Rev. W. H.
Findlay, burdened with the cares of administration, and living
from day to day on the verge of a physical collapse. In 1892
Henry Little returned to England after a long and fruitful
ministry of twenty-nine years. The orphanage and industrial
school at Karur will always be associated with his name. Like
most administrators who have survived their contemporaries
and perhaps two or three subsequent relays of reinforcement,
he was towards the close of his service inclined to be somewhat
dictatorial in administration, but allowance can always be
made in such cases, and nothing can detract from the strength
and unselfishness of his ruling. He was wholly surrendered to
the cause of the Church committed to his care, and his fatherly
tenderness to the orphans whom he gathered together at Karur
in the days of famine will never be forgotten. When he left
India in 1892 the Chairmanship passed to the Rev. W. H.
Findlay, but he too was obliged to seek some measure of
restoration to health, and it looked as though the District
would be left without a Chairman of any experience, the Rev.
J. M. Thompson having by that time also returned to England.
Under such circumstances the District was glad to accept the
offer of service for one year from the Rev. J. A. Vanes of
Bangalore, who with rare diligence had added the use of Tamil
to that of Kanarese. Vanes was on the eve of returning to
England for furlough, but was willing to postpone this for a
year in order to serve his brethren in another District. When
the year had run out Mr. Findlay had not yet returned, and
for a few months Mr. Cooling acted as Chairman. When
Findlay did return he was almost at once stricken down with
fever, and quite unable to attend the Synod in which he should
have presided. Two other members of the Staff suffered from
the ill-health of their wives. The Rev. James Lewis was
obliged to return to England on this account, and the Rev. E.
Woodward was called to pass through the sorrows of actual
bereavement.

The Missionaries sent out to the District about this time,
some of whose names have been already mentioned, were the
following : E. Woodward (1886-), E. Webster (1887-1910),
James Lewis (1889-1894), A. A. Thomas (1885-), A. H.

262 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Davey (1894-1910), H. T. Lazenby (1894-), J. S. W.
Shrewsbury (1891-1899), H. Guard Price (1894-1899), l and
A. Smith (1897-1913).

It will be noticed that the period of service in this District,
perhaps the most trying to the health of Europeans, was
distinctly lengthening.

A prominent feature of the Negapatam District is to be
found in the Findlay College at Manargudi. As we have seen
Mr. Findlay began his ministry in the High School at
Negapatam, and College classes were begun there in 1885.
But even before that time it was becoming clear that
Negapatam was never likely to be popular with Hindus as an
academic centre ; up to a certain point there was growth, but
beyond that there seemed to be no room for expansion, and
the limit reached was far from satisfactory. For two years,
1896-1898, there were no College classes. Meantime the High
School at Manargudi had so prospered as to show that the
true centre of higher educational work was to be found in that
town, and in 1898 the College department was transferred
from Negapatam to Manargudi. The work was assigned to
the Rev. A. H. Davey who up to that time had been appointed
to the English work in Negapatam. This Missionary had the
special gift which marks the successful teacher ; he soon
acquired an extraordinary influence over his students, and
his return from furlough in 1898 was made the occasion of a
demonstration on the part not only of his students but also
of prominent Hindus in Manargudi. When the Rev. Joseph
West as Chairman of the District visited Manargudi he said
in his report of his visit : ' Mr. Davey stood easily revealed as
the very self-possessed and capable pivot round whom the
whole institution moved harmoniously/ In 1900 Davey took
over a Hindu School which had been a somewhat troublesome
rival in the days before College classes were opened, and this
acquisition greatly strengthened his hold upon the student
population. The number of students rapidly increased until
in 1901 there were five hundred on the rolls of the College. The
College buildings were painfully inadequate. Some of the
classes were conducted in mere sheds thatched with palm-
leaves. Steps were, however, taken to remedy this defect,
and in 1914 a more worthy building was erected with a hostel

1 See p. 341

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 263

attached. The Madras Government highly appreciated the
work being done in this College and gave the handsome grant
of a thousand pounds towards the cost of building.

In 1909 this happy and prosperous college was thrown into
confusion. The kindly feeling shown towards the Missionaries
was displaced by angry demonstrations and rioting, in the
course of which the Mission Chapel was burned to the ground.
Some eighteen months before, two Brahman students who had
come under the influence of the Rev. J. J. Ellis decided that
for them there was no way open but that which led to Christ.
Since the memorable conversions which had taken place in
the time of the Rev. W. O. Simpson's ministry only one convert
from Manargudi had entered the Church. That convert was
a young man now well known and respected both in England
and in India, the Rev. Theophilus Subrahmanyam. As his
conversion had taken place when he was absent from
Manargudi, there had been no great commotion in the town.
But in the case before us feeling was very different. Every
sort of inducement was held out to the young men to abandon
their intention, which was well known among their friends.
But neither threats nor promises availed to turn them from
their purpose of giving themselves openly and completely to
the Lord who had won their allegiance. For some time they
quietly continued to follow Christ while still remaining within
the bounds of the family life, but at last they decided that
the only way in which they could be Christians without com
promise was by breaking those bounds and leaving their
homes. This they did, with the result that when their action
became known the Mission premises were surrounded by an
angry mob and the chapel was set on fire by incendiaries.
As the chapel was a thatched building this was no great loss,
and a better building soon took its place. Of the two converts,
the younger, now the Rev. P. Rungaramanuja, since there was
some doubt as to his age, subsequently returned to his home,
where he continued to witness for Christ — no small test of his
sincerity under such surroundings. He afterwards entered
the Ministry, and after serving during the great war as Chap
lain to the troops in Mesopotamia with great fidelity and
efficiency, he was ' lent ' by the Society to the Student Move
ment in India. In this very responsible position he is still at
work. The elder of the two, John Krishnaswami, after enduring

264 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

every sort of hardship and insult, was finally received into
the Church by baptism at Karur, and was sent to continue
his studies in the Royapetta College in Madras. It is through
such tribulations that the Brahman enters into the Christian
fellowship. For him, in the opinion of his dearest, there is no
shame comparable with that of confessing Christ in baptism,
and it is when the individual dares to defy the law which his
elders observe, and takes action in proof of his surrender to
Christ, that the bitter hostility of Hinduism breaks through
the surface friendliness which is so often shown to the
Missionary.

The work of the College, of course, suffered serious disloca
tion ; but within a very few years, when the popular feeling
had died down, the students who had been withdrawn resumed
their attendance. Some temporary set-back of this kind was
certain to take place, but these conversions had another result
which was greatly deplored. Mr. Davey took up a position
in this matter which made it impossible for him to remain in
charge of a Missionary Institution, and his brethren in the
work recommended that he should return to England and
enter the home work. This he was unwilling to accept. He
withdrew from the Ministry and entered Government service
in the educational department.

The best comment on the whole incident of these conver
sions from among the students of Findlay College may be
found in the Report of a Secretarial visit paid by William
Goudie in 1920. Writing of Manargudi he says :

It is at once disappointing and instructive to know that after close
on a hundred years of work there is not in all this stronghold of Brah-
manism a single indigenous Christian family, or resident convert won
in the town. The Christian congregation is composed of imported
Christian workers, and one or two Christian families beginning to be
drawn to the place by openings for secular work. The situation is
disappointing, but it offers no proof of failure. ' It is hard,' said my
colleague to one of the Ministers, ' to think we have laboured so long
without fruit.' ' Don't say that,' came the quick reply ; ' you would
not say " without fruit " if you had known Manargudi twenty-five
years ago as I did, and could see it now.'

The fruit of our work has been great to eyes that could see and can
judge over a long period. There are coming to Manargudi, as to many
another city where converts are few, new thoughts of God, new ideals
of life, with a hallowing of family ties, and a new sense of citizenship,
and this as a result of Christian example and diffused Christian teaching.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 265

But the story of mission work in the town constitutes a strong
indictment of Hinduism. The work of the Missionaries has borne
occasional fruit in converts, but converts' lives have never been safe
among their own people, and Manargudi has invariably cast them out.
The Hindu community can tolerate any irregularity or viciousness of
life, but not the crime of being a Christian, so it finds itself without a
resident convert at the present time, though sons of the town are doing
distinguished service for Christ in a number of centres in South India.

We must now go back a little in our record of events. In
1899 the Rev. Joseph West, to whose service in North Ceylon
reference has already been made, was appointed Chairman of
the Negapatam District, and he has lived to see the all but barren
field become one of the most fruitful in India. His coming
brought to the hard-pressed Missionaries a spirit of cheer and
hope, so that he was received by them as ' a man sent of God.'
They spoke of ' his cheerful spirit, his brotherly sympathy,
his deep piety and his earnest zeal in the work of his Master/
In describing his first ' episcopal ' visit to the Circuits he con
trasts, as was natural, the general aspects of the work in his
new field with that which he had known in Ceylon. In India
it was almost entirely among the outcaste classes that acces
sions to the Church were found, while in North Ceylon
Christianity had affected all classes of the community. Even
in Karur, where the church was most prosperous,

It is just the same. We work our own little plot with something of
success, but having in the town no High School — the agency facile
Princeps for reaching the higher classes — Christianity scarcely touches
the great bulk of the population.

The Missionaries sent out to this District after the year 1900,
and who were still on the field in 1913, were W. S. Dodd (1900),
R. Smailes (1903), A. W. Turner (1904), J. J. Ellis (1908), A. C,
Hall (1911), and F. T. Shipham (1911). These made up a
reinforcement which was great in quality and calibre, and under
their ministry the District at last began to move. The in
crease in the ranks of the Indian workers, however, was small,
and the number of Catechists was even less at the close of the
period than it had been at the beginning. There were also a
number of changes made in the stationing of the Missionaries,
in spite of the fact that the better manning and housing of the
Staff enabled its members to remain longer on the field than
had been possible in earlier days. This was inevitable, as the

266 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

older men returned to work in England and under emergencies
caused by furlough, but it lessened the local influence gained
by Missionaries where continuity of service is secured. During
this last period of our survey the membership in each of the
chief Circuits showed a considerable advance. If we add those
' on trial ' to the full members Negapatam showed an increase
of seventy-four, Manargudi a hundred and forty-eight, Karur
twenty-six, and Trichinopoly a hundred and twenty-nine.
These Circuits were also divided — as village work within their
vicinity developed — into sections indicated by the words
' City ' and ' Mission,' and each of the ' City ' sections made
gratifying progress towards that independence which is marked
by the support of its own Pastor. The increase in the Trichi
nopoly Circuit was specially remarkable. At the time
when the District was separated from that of Madras the
membership at this centre was less than a hundred. In 1913
it was two hundred and fifty-seven, and there were indications
of a still larger ingathering from villages in this Circuit. The
features of Church organization which are familiar in the
Methodist Church, such as Quarterly Meetings, Leaders'
Meetings, and representation in the Synods, began to appear,
and they added to each Church an element of indigenous
strength, which promised much for days to come. The
development of village work necessitated the establishment
of Boarding Schools at each of the chief centres, one for boys
and one for girls, and they were made available for the poorer
children of Christian people. Two District Boarding Schools
of a higher grade were also established, the one for boys being
situated at Manargudi and that for girls at Trichinopoly ; the
latter was afterwards raised to the High School standard, and
its presence imparted a considerable amount of strength to the
Church in that city. Such schools were entirely necessary if
the youth of the Church were to be protected from moral con
tamination arising from the mass of degraded life around
them, but they also became a happy recruiting ground for the
army of catechists and teachers required as village after
village began to move towards fellowship in the Christian
Church. The work in the Konga-nad, for instance, could
scarcely have been possible but for the supplies of teachers
from Karur.

A happy, and in one sense a unique, feature of this District

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 267

is to be found in the Sunday Schools conducted in each Circuit.
These are indeed to be found in each of the Methodist Districts
in India, and they have proved their value in each. But that
which makes this branch of Christian work peculiar in the
Negapatam District is the fact that non-Christians and those
of higher castes are in the habit of attending them. Thus
in 1895 of the two thousand children attending the Sunday
Schools half of that number were Sudras, three hundred were
Brahmans and five hundred Christians, a few Romanists also
attending. It is remarkable that in a District in which caste
prejudice is so strong there should be this admixture of castes,
and that, as we have seen, the Church should receive so many
of its adherents from among those belonging to higher grades
of the social scale. In this particular the Negapatam District
offers a striking contrast with other Districts. It is a matter
fraught with happiest omens for the future that this feature
should appear in an area in which Brahmanism is to be found
at the zenith of its power. The great temples of Srirangam,
Madura, and Kumbhakonam are the symbols of its supremacy.
Here, if anywhere, caste is to be found in its most uncom
promising expression. Yet there is no District in India within
the areas evangelized by the Methodist Church in which
so many converts from the higher castes have accepted
Christ and entered His Church. In the earliest days the
Sudras seemed likely to enter it in numbers. From time to
time Brahmans have risked everything to follow Christ, and
in the decade immediately preceding the year of the Society's
Centenary we have noted the beginnings of a movement by
community among the most degraded and depraved of the
Panchama Class. And this is why the Parable of the King
dom of Heaven which is best illustrated by the history of
the Methodist Church in this District is that of the Draw-
net. Every class is represented in the gathering of the
Church. Every sort of man is caught in the meshes of the
Divine love. Some are found to be not worthy, and they
fall back into the deeps from which they came ; but upon
others the Master lays His hand and claims them for His
service.

262 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

(iii.) THE MYSORE DISTRICT : ' THE LEAVEN '

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God is
ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

The Kingdom of God is like unto leaven which a woman took and
hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened. — MATT. xiii. 33.

The Gospel of Christ was a new and quickening power cast into
the midst of an old and dying world, a centre of life around which all
the moral energies which still survived, and all which itself should
awaken, might form and gather ; by the help of which the world might
constitute itself anew. — DR. TRENCH.

Of this the story of the Mysore Mission is a ' Parable.'

In the first decade of its separate existence the Mysore
District passed through a period of manifold distresses. The
Tamil Circuit in Bangalore was still attached to the Madras
District for purposes of administration, and though at first
this arrangement had its convenience, inasmuch as it kept
Thomas Cryer in a Circuit where he would have been
subordinate to Garrett, although so much his senior, if it had
formed part of the newly constituted District, yet the expendi
ture of time and money involved by the Missionary's attending
Synods held in Madras was considerable, and when in 1853 the
Rev. Peter Batchelor succeeded Cryer in Bangalore, the Tamil
Circuit was brought under the same administration as those
in which the language used was Kanarese.

An incident in 1851 created a great deal of disturbance in
Bangalore City. At that time the Rev. E. J. Hardey was
associated with Garrett in that Circuit, and the former accepted
from the Mussulmans of the city a challenge to a public contest.
The lists were duly prepared, and all formalities observed.
Independent judges were appointed, and it was agreed that
if their verdict was given against the Christian he was to
become a follower of the Prophet, while if it was given against
the Kaji, his opponent, the latter would become a Christian.

A ' conversion ' on such grounds would have been of little
value from a religious point of view to either side, and it is

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 269

strange that Hardey should have accepted a condition of this
kind. In the first encounter the Mussulman quoted twenty
passages from the Koran in support of his views, and as the
Missionary had brought forward only fourteen from the Bible,
the popular decision was that the former had already van
quished his opponent, and payment of the penalty was de
manded. But the Muhammadan failed to appear for the
later stages of this tournament. Probably he was annoyed
because quotations from the Koran which were made by his
adversary somewhat discredited the source of Moslem teaching
in the opinion of the Brahmans present. Judgement was
given against him in default. Each side thus claimed the
victory. It is doubtful whether anything is gained by such
encounters. Even though they afforded an opportunity for
setting forth the teaching of Christ, the atmosphere is not one
in which any hearer is likely to realize his personal need of a
Saviour from sin.

Garrett was working the Mission Press hard in those days.
In 1850 an output of fifty thousand tracts and school-books
was reported, comprising nearly two million pages. Large
profits were made, and these were used in enlarging the Press
itself, and in financing other local objects, but the Home
Committee claimed that they ought rather to have been credited
to the Society in relief of their financial burdens, and the con
troversy that arose was not helpful to the general work of the
Mission. A third house, necessitated by the Committee's
order to concentrate in Bangalore, was one of these local
objects, but Garrett was severely censured for using local
income in providing for its erection.

Sanderson and Glanville were now in Mysore, the former
occupied with the translation of the Bible into Kanarese, while
the latter had charge of the educational work. But in 1852
Sanderson's health gave way ; he retired to the hills and was
absent from Mysore nearly the whole year. In 1853 both he
and Hardey returned to England, and, as Morris was recruiting
his health in Australia, the whole of the work, begun with such
high hopes of rapid extension, devolved upon Garrett and
Glanville, each of whom was fettered by the departmental
work in which he was engaged, Even Gubbi, chosen by Hodson
as the chief centre of the Mysore Mission, was abandoned,
the Mission house and chapel being sold. Four years were

270 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

to pass before work was again taken up in Gubbi. The protests
of ' Old Daniel ' were pathetic, but they failed to reach the
Methodist Church in England.

In 1853, Mr. Liston Garthwaite, who had been trained as a
teacher at the Westminster College, arrived in Bangalore to
take charge of the educational work, for which the large grant
of a thousand pounds per annum was being received from the
Government. When it is remembered that at the same time
the Mysore High School was financed by the Raja, it is evident
that educational work in the Mysore State was not a charge
upon the funds of the Society. At the close of 1853 a further
step was taken by the Government. It was proposed to place
all educational work in the State under the control of the
Mission . A class for training teachers was added to the Bangalore
school. Schools and teachers' houses at Mysore, Hunsur, and
Shimoga, to be built at the expense of the Government, and
according to any plan proposed by the Mission, were sanctioned.
The opportunity thus afforded was a great one, but it was far
beyond the powers of the Mission to accept it, and thus the
greatest opportunity ever given to the Methodist Church for
the efficient occupation of a definite field passed, never to return.
By this time Hodson was on his way back, and Morris was
returning from Australia. With Hardey's return confidently
expected, it seemed as though the worst days of the Mission
were over.

When Hardey returned to England he took with him a
remarkable document signed in nine languages by prominent
men in Mysore City. This was a petition for the establishing
of an English school under the direction of the Mission. To
wards the cost of building such a school Hardey had collected
during his furlough the sum of two hundred pounds, and he
hoped to secure a similar amount from local subscriptions after
his return. He returned early in 1854, and on April 22 of that
year a memorable meeting was held in Mysore City. Great
interest and enthusiasm were shown, and the sum of a hundred
and twenty pounds was at once promised, while a petition was
forwarded from that meeting to the British Commissioner,
Major General Cubbon, asking for a monthly grant of eight
hundred rupees to be made towards the maintenance of the
school. The meeting did not close without an attempt being
made to secure the exclusion of the Bible from the school, but

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 271

Hardey was firm and declined to consider such a proposal.
The British Commissioner, however, refused to allow the grant
asked for, on the ground that the Raja's school was still in
existence, and the Mission school would appear as a rival
establishment. No help towards such an object was at that
time to be expected from the Home Committee, and it looked
as if the whole scheme would fall through. The school was
nevertheless begun, and after a few years the persistent efforts
of the Rev. J. Hutcheon were rewarded by a grant in aid. In
1857 it was decided to levy a fee from boys attending Mission
schools, and this more healthy method of financing such
establishments has been continued up to the present. But
even thus higher education was carried on with the greatest
difficulty.

There were other difficulties in the District. In 1854 Glan-
ville and Morris had started a secular newspaper which they
called The Bangalore Herald. They had done so on their
own responsibility without consulting their Superintendent,
and in disregard of Hodson's remonstrances when he heard of
the venture. Prompt action was taken by the Committee,
to Hodson's great relief. Glanville was removed to South
Africa, and Morris transferred to Mysore City. In 1857 he
left India, and some of his colleagues were relieved when he
did so. Hodson, who was at first opposed to the employment
of laymen as head masters in Mission schools, now swung
round to the opposite position, and deploring the appointment
of Missionaries to the work of teaching secular subjects, now
asked for three well-qualified unordained men to take charge
of the schools in Bangalore. Such men, however, were not
easily found in the 'fifties, and to add to Hodson's difficulties,
Garthwaite, the representative of such a class of agent, now
asked to be relieved of educational work on the ground that
his eyes suffered from strain. He also hoped that he might be
recommended for ordination, and when the Missionaries
refused to accept his offer he withdrew from the service of the
Mission.

A still more painful episode now occurred. By 1856 Garrett
had been seventeen years in Bangalore, and during that time
had taken no furlough. His management of the Press had
been most successful, and he was regarded by those who were
outside of the circle to which he belonged as a Missionary of

272 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

great ability. He had also served as Chairman of the District
during the absence of Hodson, and neither in the one depart
ment nor in the other had there been any check or adequate
scrutiny of his administration. The issue was most deplorable.
When in 1856 he did return to England the affairs of the press
came into the hands of Sanderson and Pordige, and they felt
it to be their painful duty to call attention to the financial
accounts left by Garrett. The latter protested that he was
able to justify himself completely, but though he returned to
Bangalore for this purpose, he failed to do so, and thus one
who in many ways had been a source of strength to the Mysore
Mission suffered at last a sad eclipse, and his name shortly
after passed out of the records of the District. In 1858 he
resigned his position and withdrew from the Methodist
Ministry.

All this was distressing enough. The first contingent of
able men had either died on the field or returned to England
disabled, and those who had taken their places proved to be
disappointing, while the loss of Hodson 's wise administration
for ten years was severely felt. But in October, 1854, Hodson,
at last relieved of duties in Madras, l returned to Bangalore to
his own satisfaction and greatly to the advantage of the work.
In the following year Sanderson also returned with restored
health, and he was followed in 1856 by the Rev. Robert Pordige.
In 1857 two others were sent to this District, both of them
pre-eminent in character and of outstanding intellectual force.
These were the Revs. John Shaw Banks and John Hutcheon.
The impression they made upon their colleagues may be judged
from the fact that the Chairman, when seeking further rein
forcements, insisted in every letter that these two were ' exactly
the type of man required for the work.' Hodson was deter
mined to maintain a high standard in the missionary staff,
and his insisting on this led to a certain amount of friction
between him and the Secretariat, so that though the Govern
ment grant in favour of the Bangalore High School made it
possible to receive an additional Missionary without cost to
the Society, while another was required to fill the vacancy
caused by the withdrawal of Morris, the reinforcement was
not sent.

Of the effect of the Mutiny on Indian Missions we have

*See p. 215.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 273

written in another chapter. The Missionaries sent out to the
Mysore District in 1859 were the Revs. J. H. Cummings, H. J.
Sykes, and W. M. Armistead. But these had scarcely arrived
before the Staff was again in the shadow of a great bereavement.
The Rev. E. J. Hardey was a notable Missionary. He lacked,
it is true, the gentleness of his brother Samuel1 ; but, though his
frank outspoken utterances sometimes got him into trouble,
and on one occasion even earned for him the censure of his
brethren, his defects were those of his qualities, and in kindli
ness of heart and patient dealing with the humblest of the
flock he was pre-eminent. He delighted in the work of an
evangelist, and few have been more impressive. His great
physical strength enabled him to endure fatigue until it seemed
as though he could never be wearied. In March, 1858, his
wife, who had long been in feeble health, had died, and in the
last month of the same year, while he was touring with Hodson
among the villages near the great Falls of the river Kaveri,
he was attacked by cholera, and after a few hours of mortal
agony the strong and fruitful life was closed. To-day his
lonely grave stands by the roadside, a silent claim that the
land for which he died be won for Christ. It is more than a
claim : it is a pledge for the Methodist Church to redeem. It
was with chastened hearts that the Missionaries assembled for
the Synod of 1859, but that year was really the beginning of
a new era for the Mission, and from that time its progress was
continuous and marked by the consolidation of every position
gained.

During the latter part of the 'forties the Missionaries received
into the fellowship of the Methodist Ministry the Rev. W.
Walker. Their experience of ' Assistants ' had been far from
pleasant, but Mr. Walker won for himself the respect and
affection even of those who had been most opposed to the
admission of men who were ' country-born ' into the Ministry.
He entered upon his work at a time when there was a general
discontent with the status of Ministers recruited in India, and
sharing in that feeling he withdrew for a time from ministerial
work. But he still continued to serve as head master of the
English School in Tumkur, and in 1852 he again entered the
Ministry. His ordination followed in 1854. Though born
in Madras, he had an excellent command of colloquial Kanarese,

1 See p. 199.

274 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

and rendered good service at Kunigal, Bangalore, and Gubbi.
He died while on tour in 1872.

After the withdrawal of Garrett the Mission press in
Bangalore was under the care of the Rev. R. W. Pordige.
Some idea of the work done in this department may be con
veyed by the statement that the profits from the press, carried
to the credit of the Mission, during the years 1857-1864
amounted to five thousand four hundred pounds. The labour
entailed had been very great, and Pordige had contributed
in no small measure to the efficiency of other Missionaries by
his supply of Christian literature. In the multitude of publica
tions special interest was taken in the new and enlarged
edition of a Kanarese dictionary prepared by the Rev. D.
Sanderson. The previously used dictionary was that of the
Rev. W. Reeves, and it was found to be cumbersome, in
accurate, and deficient. In nine months Mr. Sanderson had
prepared this greatly improved edition, which continued for
many years to help young Missionaries over the difficulty of
acquiring the language in which they were to preach.

Another happy incident in what was otherwise a somewhat
depressing period was the return of the Rev. M. T. Male to the
District in 1859. It will be remembered that the British
Commissioner had disapproved of the relations between Mr.
Male and the Raja of Mysore, and in consequence Mr. Male
had returned to England. But the course of time had removed
the objections raised, and the District was thus able to recover
the service of an experienced Missionary. Male was appointed
to Tumkur, from which station he visited Gubbi and Kunigal,
both of which places held sorrowful memories for him. But
what was most distressing was the derelict condition of Mission
stations in which so much devoted service had been rendered.
Now, in the providence of God, they were to begin in Tumkur
a work which was to issue eventually in the formation of one
of the largest Churches in the District, and in missionary
institutions of great value. To those who visit in these days
the different Circuits of the Mysore District it will appear
strange that Thomas Hodson, in choosing a town to be the
head quarters of the new Mission, should have passed by
Tumkur in favour of Gubbi, and subsequent history has only
accentuated his initial error. But it must always be
remembered that Hodson was influenced by the two-fold

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 275

consideration that there were neither Europeans to distract, nor
Brahmans to oppose, the Missionaries who might be sent to
Gubbi, while both of these were to be found in Tumkur. Had
he been able to foresee the future he would have found that
the European element in Tumkur, so far from being a hindrance,
would have greatly furthered his efforts. For during many
years the chief British Officer in this town was one of many
devout and godly administrators, who have been the savouring
salt of the British rule in India. Major Dobbs proved to be
the tried and devoted friend of all Missionaries who came in
contact with him, and when there was no Missionary available
to conduct service for the few Christians in Tumkur this
Christian officer held services regularly for them in his own
bungalow. In 1842 Male, who was then stationed at Gubbi,
had opened an English school in Tumkur, a Government grant
having made it possible for him to do so. But not even then
was Tumkur recognized as a Mission station, and six years
after it was still regarded as an annexe to the Gubbi Circuit.
It was only in 1853 that the appointment of a Missionary to
this more promising place began to be considered. By this
time the school was prosperous, and there were indications
that a school for girls would be equally so, but in the shortage
of Missionaries more could not be done, and Hodson feared
that Methodists would be forestalled in occupying this town
by German Missionaries, who had appeared in Shimoga. It
was the return of Male that made it possible to station a
European Missionary in Tumkur. Mrs. Male at once opened
a school for girls, and a boarding school for boys, started
in 1856, was destined to have great importance in sub
sequent developments. But at first the work done did not
differ greatly from that which was being done in other
Circuits ; accessions to the Church came slowly, just as they
did throughout the Kanarese area. It was in 1876, the year
of the great famine, that Tumkur became prominent among
the Mysore Circuits, but that story awaits us in later pages.

The 'sixties were ushered in by the happy event of the coming
of Christian women definitely set apart for the service of their
sisters in India. In 1860 the Women's Auxiliary Society
sent their first representative to India in the person of Miss
Mary Scott, who was appointed to Negapatam, and in the
same year Miss Hanna Wildish and Miss S. R. Churchward

276 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

were sent, the former to Bangalore (Tamil) and the latter to
Tumkur. These were the forerunners of a noble army of
women who have helped to raise the whole status of women
in India, and have brought immeasurable blessing upon
thousands of lives. It was in the same year that the first
suggestion was made as to the desirability of opening work in
at least two more towns which have now become centres of
missionary service, each having its own distinctive feature.
Early in 1860 the Revs. J. S. Banks and Daniel Sanderson
proceeded to make an extended tour among the villages on
the western side of the Mysore Province, and the account of
this tour, given by the former, is marked by the keen percep
tion, the temperate judgement, and the loyalty to truth which
characterized John Shaw Banks to the very close of his long
and honoured life. In the course of a tour extending over
two months the two Missionaries visited many towns and
villages in which the name of Jesus was unknown, but two
towns were specially mentioned as offering favourable oppor
tunities for Mission work. These were Hassan and Shimoga.
It fell to Dr. Banks to begin the work in the latter of these
three years after he had first called attention to it. Each of
these now has its Christian House of Prayer, and each has in
its midst the Church of the living God. At that rime, however,,
there was no immediate prospect that either would be occupied,
though the urgency of the plea sent to England by two of its
wisest and most deliberate Missionaries was one of peculiar
intensity of feeling.

In the journal of Thomas Hodson for the year 1861 there
occurs an entry which should be noted here. It is to the effect
that it was proposed to issue a small monthly periodical, to
be called The Harvest Field. That journal was destined to
become the organ of exchange of missionary experience and
policy from one end of India to the other.

The disposition of the staff in 1860 was as follows. Bangalore
(Kanarese) was strongly manned. In addition to the Chair
man, Thomas Hodson, there was stationed in the city the
Rev. M. T. Male. The Rev. R. W. Pordige was in charge of
the press, and the Rev. J. S. Banks had charge of the educa
tional work. The Rev. J. H. Cummings, who had recently
arrived, was also here for a few months. The Tamil work in
Bangalore was in the care of the Rev. J. Pinkney, assisted by

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 277

the Rev. S. Cocking, but the latter died in the following year.
In Mysore City the Revs. J. Hutcheon and Jacob Marrat were
stationed. W. M. Armistead and H. J. Sykes were in Gubbi,
and Daniel Sanderson was alone at Tumkur. There were, in
addition, two East Indian Ministers, the Revs. W. Walker and
H. O. Sullivan, and two Native Assistant Missionaries. Eight
Catechists and four Local Preachers completed the staff.
The total Church membership in the District was two hundred
and seventy-four, of whom no less than one hundred and eighty-
seven were to be found in the Tamil Circuit. It will thus be
seen that the Mission had scarcely yet, judging by the test of
Church membership, begun to affect the Kanarese people.
The number of pupils in the schools was comparatively large,
amounting to one thousand two hundred and fifty-nine. The
increase in the staff enabled the Missionaries to adopt a system
of evangelistic touring, and to follow the historic method of
going two and two. Male and Sykes, Hutcheon and Banks,
and Sanderson and Armistead all made far-extended tours in
the unoccupied area about this time, sowing the good seed of
the Kingdom wherever they went. But the harvest was still
delayed. Sanderson especially had the burden of an un
fruitful Mission weighing heavily upon his heart. ' We cannot
believe,' he writes, ' that the Lord of the harvest has ordained
us to perpetual sowing — to year after year of monotonous
fruitlessness. The preaching of the Gospel was received with
an excess of bitterness, and with hideous blasphemies, while
the moral degradation, inevitable where idolatry is the common
practice, was apparent in the shocking indecencies which were
regarded as a matter of no concern.' All this troubled the
Missionary and led him to ask for the special prayer of the
Church at home. In Mysore City there was the same bitter
and blasphemous opposition, but here the darkness was
somewhat relieved by gleams of light that told of a coming
dawn.

Hutcheon was a great Missionary — great in his personal
devotion, and in the concomitant power of winning the souls
of men. He had also the gift of insight into movements which,
though outwardly hostile, indicated nevertheless that growing
sense of shame which foretells the birth of a consciousness of
sin. In the Pariah quarter of Viranageri he had the joy of
baptizing several converts. These, no less than if they had

278 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

been Brahmans, suffered the loss of all things. But they were
sustained in their new-found allegiance by a power which
was not of this world, and from the Pariah Church of
Viranageri many a devoted Christian worker was recruited in
after years. The little church in the city was now beginning
to assume proportions. The only place of worship was a small
schoolroom erected by Thomas Hodson in 1843. It measured
thirty-three feet by fifteen, and the congregation of forty
persons found it too small for their comfort. Presently we
find Hutcheon pleading with the home Committee for a grant
to enable him to build a worthier temple for the worship of
God, and the new chapel was dedicated to that worship in
1871. The chapel still stands, though it has twice had to be
enlarged, and a second chapel has been erected in another
part of the city. On the educational side a Government
grant had greatly relieved the situation in the high school,
and there were in addition four vernacular schools in different
parts of Mysore City. Mrs. Hutcheon had opened a school for
girls, and a second school for these was opened in the Fort in
1869. Hutcheon had also opened a shop for the sale of
Christian literature, and in a single year he had sold a hundred
pounds' worth of books.

When the first baptism in Viranageri took place a group of
some fifteen women were virulent in their abuse, and relentless
in their persecution of the new converts. Their hostility was
so pronounced that the Church gave itself up to prayer for
them. Six years after one of these women came forward to
confess her sin and to yield to the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Within the next four years every one of those who had been
such bitter opponents of the first converts entered by baptism
into the very fellowship they had denounced. This fruit was
largely the result of the work of women for women. The wife
of the Rev. Abijah Samuel especially had visited the women in
their homes, and had talked with them as only a woman can
talk with women, until the bitterness died out of their hearts,
and the love of Jesus took its place. So marked was the result
of this service rendered by the Minister's wife that the em
ployment of another agency came into view, and from that
time the work of ' Bible-women ' was recognized as not the least
effective of those agencies already in operation. The first
Bible-woman to be appointed in Mysore was Sanjivi, who for

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 279

many years, during which she was often severely tested, served
with the utmost fidelity, and with a heart brimming over with
love, her sisters who still remained in the darkness of heathen
ism. There was now in Mysore what may fairly be called
' an indigenous Church/ humble in origin, and despised by
both Brahman and Sudra, but destined to become a true Church
of Christ, rich in spiritual gifts, and ennobled by its consecration
to the living God.

The 'sixties were also remarkable for the rapid extension of
work in the education of girls. This was happily coincident
with the coming of the workers sent out by the Women's
Auxiliary, and their sympathy and zeal greatly furthered the
movement. In 1850 there were only fifteen girls in the
Kanarese schools of the District, and these were supported at
the expense of the Mission with a view to securing their
attendance. In 1859 the number had risen to eighty, but in
1869 there were five hundred and eighty girls in the schools,
with the prospect of a still larger increase. We have already
referred to two of those who had been sent out by the Women's
Auxiliary, and they were followed by Miss Tobias, Miss Tregon-
ing, and Miss A. M. Beauchamp. Of these five Miss Church
ward, Miss Tobias, and Miss Tregoning all married Missionaries
within a few years of their arrival in India; but though this
meant for the Committee in England the difficulty, greater
then than it is now, of finding others to take their posts, their
service, so far from being lost to the Church, only took a wider
range. Who that knew Miss Tobias, for instance, after she
had become Mrs. Hudson, could deny that her quick and
brilliant mind, together with her deep and wise sympathy,
were still enlisted on behalf of those girls whom she taught for
so many years both in the girls' boarding school for Christians,
and in the school for girls of high caste in Bangalore ? Arid
the same might be said of most of those who changed their
names but never changed their interest and sympathy. Miss
Beauchamp's ministry was a very remarkable one. Appointed
first in 1868 to the school for Tamil girls in the Bangalore
Cantonment, she gave one term of service to a similar school
in North Ceylon. In 1885 she returned to Bangalore. In
1887-1896, a period broken by one year of furlough, she took
up educational work in Shimoga, and for a part of that time
she lived apart from the fellowship of those who belonged to

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

her own country. Thence she went back to Ceylon, where she
completed thirty-seven years of service, retiring from the
work at last in 1905.

While the Mission to the Kanarese people was thus passing
through its many vicissitudes, and exercising the patience of
hope, though hope was long deferred and patience seemed
likely to be exhausted, the Tamil work in Bangalore had
become established in the Cantonment, and the Church steadily
increased in numbers and in moral and spiritual worth. When
Thomas Cryer left this Circuit in 1850 the membership, includ
ing those of British birth, stood at a hundred and thirty-nine.
The English school was still carried on, and vernacular schools
for boys and girls were still in existence. Several Missionaries
succeeded Cryer, but it was not until the Rev. E. J. Symons
was appointed in 1864 that any one of these was able to spend
more than three years in the Circuit. Two young Missionaries,
the Revs. S. Cocking and S. Mornington, died during the first
year of their Ministry. Symons, however, was able to continue
at work until 1882, but within that period the English members
were separated from the Tamil, and formed a separate Circuit.
In 1880 the Tamil Church was the largest in the District,
having a membership of a hundred and twenty-nine.

The Missionaries sent into this field during the sixties were :
S. Cocking (1860-1861), J. Marrat (1861-1866), S. Dalzell
(1862-1873), J. Greenwood (1863-1873), J. Stephenson (1863-
1873), G. McCutcheon (1863-1866), J. Hudson (1864-1896),
S. Mornington (1864), S. Symons (1864-1882), A. Fentiman
(1866-1872), T. G. Sykes (1867-1869), J. Carr (1868-1869),
G. Hinson (1868-1869), A. J. O. Lyle (1868-1873).

This is a long list, but it will be observed that many of these
served for a very brief period, death, sickness, and other causes
cutting short the term of service. The tradition of long service
which now belongs to this District was not yet established.
Because of this brevity of service on the part of so many it has
been held that it was not until 1870 that the Mission became
really effective. But in saying this it must be remembered
that the efficiency of later years rested upon the experience
gained, often at great cost, by those who laid the foundations
upon which other happier men have built. Two notable
Missionaries left India during this decade. Dr. John Shaw
Banks withdrew in 1865. He afterwards became the much

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 281

respected and beloved theological tutor of Headingley College,
and was elected to the Chair of the Conference in 1902. The
Rev. Daniel Sanderson left in 1866 and was appointed Governor
of Richmond College. These during the many years they
were spared to serve the Church in England never lost their
love for the Mysore District.

One very necessary feature of missionary work was strangely
missing until the 'sixties, and even then it was far from that
which it should have been, and that which it afterwards
became. Definite training of Catechists and Candidates for
the Ministry began in 1869, when this branch of work was
taken up by the Rev. J. Stephenson in Tumkur. Five young
men were in the class then formed for instruction in theology,
while five others were being trained for the service of Catechists.
It was hoped that the latter also would ultimately qualify
for admission to the theological class. But, as in other Districts,
it was, even after so many years, not yet clearly seen that this
work was a first essential to a Mission which hoped to make
Christianity indigenous in India. In the following year the
class was removed to Mysore, and four years afterwards it was
discontinued, and was not begun again until 1879. The
training of Catechists was later on taken up by the Rev.
C. H. Hocken in Mysore, and then by the Rev. B. Robinson in
Shimoga. In 1901 the whole of this work was added to a
normal school for teachers, and a suitable home for the two
institutions was found in Hardwicke College, in Mysore City.
Later still a true and stable foundation for the training of the
two classes of agents was found in the United Theological
Seminary and Normal School in Tumkur, while preparation
for the service of an ordained Minister was admirably provided
in the Union Theological College in Bangalore. The last-
named institutions, however, belong to a quite modern period
in the history of the District.

The District was now well furnished with buildings in which
to house its many agencies. In 1871 Thomas Hodson estimated
the value of Mission property in the Mysore at twenty-one
thousand pounds, nearly the whole of which amount had been
obtained in India, and with a strong staff on the field at the
beginning of the 'seventies it seemed as though the Mission
might now begin to gather a larger harvest than it had hitherto
done ; but it was in this decade that there fell upon the Mysore

282 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

country the stroke which resolved all Missionary effort into
one desperate struggle to save human life, and to befriend a
people threatened with extermination. The great famine of
1877-1878 swept away one-fourth of the Kanarese people.
The roads were lined with the skeletons of those who had
fallen by the way in their efforts to reach some place where
food might be obtained, while in one month it was estimated
that twenty-five thousand cattle perished. Children were
offered for sale by their parents, and stories of cannibalism
were only too well founded. Railways in India have made a
calamity of such dimensions impossible in these days, but at
that time no railway ran from the coast to Mysore, and though
steamers from Rangoon discharged their cargoes of rice on
the beach in Madras until thousands of tons were collected
there, no means existed for distributing the precious food where
it was so desperately needed. So much of the railway as was
then built could move little more than two thousand tons in
a day, while the Madras Government needed four thousand
tons. Even when this partial supply reached the railhead
there were no bullocks available for removing the grain to the
many distant villages where the hapless people awaited death.
The Government, both provincial and Imperial, did all that
was possible. Relief camps were set up, and thousands of
men, women, and children found in them both shelter and
food. In England the story of woe elicited the greatest
sympathy. A Fund opened by the Lord Mayor of London
very soon amounted to half a million pounds, while among
more denominational subscriptions that of fifteen thousand
pounds was contributed by the Methodists of England for
their fellow members in Madras and Mysore. Missionaries
gave themselves up to the work of distributing relief as far
as was possible, but by the time the famine had run its course
there were twenty-five thousand orphans in the relief camps,
and the Government was glad to allot these to the care of
Societies whose credentials and resources were deemed satis-
tory by the Famine Commissioners. Hodson took a hundred
girls into the boarding school in Bangalore, and directed
Gostick to take fifty boys and girls to Tumkur. Here they
were received by the Rev. G. W. Sawday, and the desolate
children found loving hearts waiting to receive them into a
Christian home.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 283

At that time the Rev. A. P. Riddett was stationed in Hassan,
and the only building on the Mission compound which could
be made available was a small stable. Into this he received
twenty children, but other sheds were quickly run up, and
more children were received, tended, and cared for. The
physical condition of many of these was appalling. Dysentery,
dropsy, and other diseases were rife among them, and the
emaciated frame had scanty powers of recuperation. Mr.
and Mrs. Riddett ministered to them with the tender solicitude
of real parents, but every day had its funeral, and two hundred
and fifty of the children died before conditions of health could
be established. Others were received from the camps to fill
their places, and the number of survivors was about two
hundred. The same Christian work was done at Tumkur.
In 1878 Gostick began the building of an orphanage, to which
the Mysore Government contributed a building grant, and a
maintenance grant for two years was received from the Lord
Mayor's Fund in London. It was decided that all girls should
find their home in Hassan and all boys in Tumkur. The
necessary exchanges were made in 1878. Help and succour
were not confined to Missionaries. English residents at the
different centres gave liberally what help was possible to them,
and showed a very true sympathy. The Native members of
the Church also brought joy to the hearts of their Ministers
by the intelligent and utterly unselfish way in which they
served the needy children. The spirit of Jesus was manifest
in His Church, and flung a ray of light across the darkness of
those days.

Few, if any, of those children had ever heard the name of
Jesus, but Christian Missionaries now stood to them in loco
parentis. They were carefully instructed in Christian truth,
and after a year or two of careful preparation they were
received by baptism into the Christian Church. In each of
the two orphanages industries appropriate to its members
were set up, and as the youths and maidens grew up marriages
were arranged, and presently small Christian villages came
into being both at Hassan and Tumkur. These owed much
to the wise counsel and loving care of G. W. Sawday and D. A.
Rees, who had followed Gostick and Riddett.

This ministry of the Christian Church was rendered from
no other motive than that of Christlike compassion for suffering

284 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

humanity. There was no ' calculation ' in its service,
no thought of advantage to be gained. But from that time
to the present the Methodist Church has reaped a bounteous
harvest as the fruit of its service of love. Those who stood
outside the Church saw what must have been to them a revela
tion. They found their own religious leaders silent and
helpless in the day of calamity. If they had sympathy — and
we are far from denying it — they lacked the power to apply
it. They were obstructed in any effort they might have
wished to make by the pitiless rules of caste. What had
Brahman priest to do with Pariah orphans ? They were
smitten with paralysis. Into the place which they should have
filled the starving villagers saw the Christian Church come with
ministering hands and tender hearts caring for the fatherless,
and bending all its resources to the uplifting of orphan children
to worthy manhood and womanhood. But there were further
results. Within a few years the Church had a community to
which it could appeal, and from which it could recruit the
agents it needed in its work of evangelizing the country. Many
a teacher and many a preacher of the Gospel of Christ was
found among those thus rescued. From those days of famine
the Methodist Church in the Mysore country counted for
something in the communal life ; the working of the leaven
began to appear. In after years the two orphanages developed
into industrial schools of first-rate efficiency, and in 1904 Mr.
R. A. Stott, who had previously served in Karur,1 was appointed
to the Tumkur school, which he quickly raised to a position
in which it commanded the respect of all classes for the work
it turned out.

By this time the organization of the District was complete,
and each of the chief centres within the area which had fallen
to the Wesleyan Mission, with the solitary exception of Chital-
drug, was occupied by the Mission more or less effectively.
It was not the whole of the Mysore Province which thus fell
to our care. The L.M.S. had been at work in the province quite
as long as the Methodists, and during the period in which work
was done by both Societies through evangelistic tours there
was little danger of overlapping, and the two Societies worked
together with mutual respect and harmony. When, however,
the stage was reached by both in which working from fixed

1 See p. 162.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 285

centres became necessary, the comity of Missions demanded
that some division of the area to be evangelized should be
made. This was done by mutual consent, and has resulted
in harmonious co-operation. Both Societies continued to
work in Bangalore, but a line was drawn from north to south
through that city. The L.M.S. undertook the evangelization
of the country lying to the east, while the W.M.S. limited its
operations to the towns and villages of the west.

This meant that four-fifths of the Mysore Province was
committed to the Wesleyan Missionary Society. Within that
area the burden of bringing the Gospel of the love of God
within the hearing of His scattered children falls wholly on the
Methodist Church. The area contains fifty-five taluks, or sub-
districts, each taluk containing about sixty thousand inhabi
tants, and the aim of the Missionaries has been to station one
agent in every taluk. That very moderate purpose has not
yet been reached. But even if it were, the Church may well
consider the position of the individual agent. Cut off by the
restriction of caste from the general life of the community in
which he finds himself, in some instances separated by many
miles from his nearest fellow Christian, poor in this world's
goods, and owing nothing to birth or social status, this one man
confronts all the panoply and pageantry of established Brah-
manism. And yet it has been through the ministry of such
as these that God has repeated His former miracle. Not many
wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called, but through
those who are despised He brings to nought the vainglory of
man and builds up the kingdom of His Son.

In 1878 the long-continued and able administration of the
Rev. Thomas Hodson came to its close, and four years after
his retirement he passed to give an account of his stewardship.
We have already described the character of this founder of the
Mysore Mission. If in later years he revealed something of
the autocrat in his direction of affairs, it must be remembered
that he had been, not only the founder of the Mission, but
also its administrator for a great number of years. He shared
with John Kilner in North Ceylon the distinction of not only
having a distinct Mission policy in his mind, but of having
also the power of carrying it into effect. It was given to him,
after the first years of tentative measures, to see the Christian
Church not only established in the chief centres of life in the

286 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Mysore country, but also permeating that life and forming
the ideals of secular government. The working of the leaven
was distinctly seen, and after his departure its effects were even
more pronounced. He was followed in the Chair of the District
by the Rev. Josiah Hudson.

For the purpose of noting the growth of the Church a few
statistics may be given at this point.

Chapels and other Preaching Places 32

Missionaries . . . . • • Z5

Catechists . . I4

Local Preachers . . I5

Members in the Church . . 5^7

Scholars in Mission Schools . . • • 4»755

Attendants at Public Worship . . .. 2,102

The Missionaries who joined the Mysore staff during the
'seventies were notable men in many respects. Omitting one
or two who resigned after a couple of years in the country, we
find in the Minutes such names as those of C. H. Hocken (1873),
J. A. Vanes (1876), D. A. Rees (1877), G. W. Sawday (1877),
A. P. Riddett (1873), J. C. Sowerbutts (1873), Ellis Roberts
(1876), H. Gulliford (1878), and Henry Haigh (1875). Of
these Riddett, Sowerbutts, and Roberts had a comparatively
short period of service, but of the others Vanes, Rees, Sawday,
and Gulliford are still on the field as we write. Hocken served
for more than twenty years, and Haigh for twenty-six. The
last-named after his return to work in England was made one
of the Secretaries of the Society, and was elected to the Chair
of the Conference in 1911. These were all men of one mind
and heart. Under the wise and kindly leading of the Rev.
Josiah Hudson they began what was the formative period of
the Mysore Mission, and the advantage of continuity of service
on the part of men of sound judgement and unquestionable
loyalty to Christ was incalculable. It was in this period that
the effective training of an adequate Native agency was begun.
We have already referred to spasmodic efforts made in this
direction, but former attempts were defeated largely because
the Native Church was not such as to provide the material
to be shaped into instruments meet for the Master's use. For

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 287

the same reason the teachers in the Mission schools were largely
non-Christian. The young men brought together at Tumkur
were transferred to Mysore in 1870, and were placed under
the zealous care of the Rev. J. Hutcheon until he left in 1871,
when they were employed as Catechists. In 1879 a more
stable foundation for this work was found in Bangalore, where
eight candidates formed a class under the careful instruction
of the Chairman. The opening of a modest hostel for Christian
boys in Mysore took place in 1882, and it was hoped that this
would prove to be a good recruiting-ground for the theological
institution. The boys were under the pastoral care of the Rev.
C. H. Hocken, but attended the classes of the high school which
the Rev. H. Guiliford was then making into a first-class edu
cational centre. This dual control was brought to a close
in 1892, when Hardwicke College was opened. The stages were
thus clearly defined, the elementary school being followed by
residence in the Mysore hostel and an education in the Arts course
of the Madras University, and this leading to the theological
institution. Up to the year 1884 thirty men had been trained
and were employed as Catechists. Six of them had passed
into the ranks of the ordained Ministry. The need of trained
Christian teachers was severely felt in a District in which
education was so prominent a feature of the Mission policy.
Something was done by means of a yearly examination which
teachers in village schools were expected to take, but this
entailed great labour for those who so examined them, and
it was a relief when the Government instituted an examination
of its own for all teachers in the province. This, however,
did not give the distinctly Christian results so much desired,
and in 1883 a normal school was begun in Shimoga. Later
on, under the management of the Rev. B. Robinson, this
attained a high degree of efficiency, and from the point of view
of this branch of work alone the breakdown in the health of
that most devoted Missionary was a great loss to the District.
We shall see presently that both the normal school and the
theological institution were admirably provided for in later
developments. Another incident of the 'seventies was the
giving up of the Mission press in Bangalore. It had been a
great asset in missionary operations up to that time. Under
the supervision of the Missionaries great improvements had
been made in Kanarese typography, and many Hindu workmen

288 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

learned the art of printing in this establishment. But by the
year 1870 there were other similar establishments in the
Province, and all necessary printing could be done without
entailing the separation of a Missionary for this special branch
of the work. Twenty years after another press was set up,
this time in Mysore City, in order to secure the advantage of a
definite Christian factor in shaping the ideals and informing
the minds of those who could not be reached in the ordinary
way. This was to be attempted by the publication of a weekly
Christian newspaper known as the Vrittanta Patrike.

Of the Missionaries sent to this District in the 'eighties, F. W.
Gostick (1880-1889) and Walter Sackett (1888-1889), the
latter was obliged to return to England after one year of
service, owing to failure of health. The former for the same
reason was transferred to the Madras District in 1881. Two
others, E. R. Eslick (1879-1884) and Amos Burnet (1882-1893),
ministered to the English congregations, civil and military,
in Bangalore. Under their ministry these became welded
into strong Churches. W. H. J. Picken (1881-1896) had
charge of the Tamil Circuit in the same city. This Church
had steadily held its own, but under the strongly evangelistic
preaching of Mr. Picken the work among the Tamils of
Bangalore became more aggressive and fruitful. For many
years in succession the greater part of the annual increase to
the membership of the District came from this Circuit. In
addition to these there were two others. The Rev. B. Robin
son (1883-1889) was one who, so far as human foresight can
declare, would have attained to a position of immense influence,
but unhappily his ministry was cut short by a complete break
down of health under conditions narrated elsewhere.1 The
last of those who joined the staff of the District in this decade
was the Rev. W. W. Holdsworth (1884-1900).

The historical events of the 'eighties were more political and
economic than directly Missionary, but as indirectly they
greatly affected missionary operations they may be briefly
indicated. In 1881 the British administration of the province
came to an end, and from that time the government was in
the hands of Native officers serving under His Highness the
Maharaja. The British left the province greatly improved.
Good arterial roads had been made through the country, and

1 See Vol. I., pp. 159 ff«

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 289

this alone greatly facilitated the movements of Missionaries.
The railway also now ran from Madras to Bangalore, and
another line was in construction, linking Mysore City with
Bombay. The financial and judicial administration of the
province had been put on good lines, and education, both by
the Government itself and the Missionary Societies at work,
had been so furthered that the Mysore State soon became
known as one of the most enlightened and progressive of the
Native States in India. This position was more than main
tained by the Administration which followed the rendition of
1881, and the Methodist Mission has invariably been treated
with impartial justice by a Government always ready to
acknowledge its indebtedness to those who had led the way in
educating the people, and had also maintained a high moral
standard among them.

About this time, too, it was realized that the Mysore State
held a great economic asset in the gold-field of Kolar. Cornish
miners came out to develop the mines, and the English Church
in Bangalore accepted the responsibility of ministering to men
who were in many instances already members of the Methodist
fellowship. Chapels were built within the area covered by
the mines, and services were regularly held. Then the fact
that thousands of labourers recruited from South India were
employed in working the mines led to the beginning of Mission
work undertaken by the Tamil Church of Bangalore, and this
work developed so rapidly that in the Centenary year the
Tamil Church on the gold-fields showed a larger membership
than any Circuit in the District except that of its parent Church
in Bangalore. This development at the mines led to the
appointment of both a European and an Indian Minister to
work in this field. The fruit of their work is not to be measured
by the local Church. Many a Tamil labourer, after working
in the mines, has returned to his distant village with the seed
of Christian truth lodged in his mind, and with the vision of
Christ imprinted on his heart.

The decade was one of consolidation rather than of extension
in missionary operations. Each station had a European
Missionary in residence, and a variety of agencies were at work
in each centre thus occupied. The ordination of the first
Kanarese Minister took place in 1883, when the Rev. T. Luke
was solemnly dedicated to the work of the Ministry. Worthily

290 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

did he fulfil his vows, dying at last in 1920 after long and
fruitful service in which he earned the respect and affection
of all who knew him. The high schools in Bangalore and
Mysore, under the care of Vanes and Gulliford, now reached a
high standard of efficiency, and Gulliford was able to complete
a new building for his school in 1884, the building formerly
occupied by the school becoming a hostel for Christian boys
in Mysore. The Rev. E. E. Jenkins in the course of his
Secretarial visit of 1884 recorded the fact that in Mysore City
one-eighth of all children of school-going age were to be found
in the schools of the Mission. It was in this period, too, that
the development of the orphanages already mentioned took
place, and the Tamil Circuit was so successful as to receive the
unique distinction of congratulations from the Missionary
Committee.

In 1888 the last-named Circuit passed through a great storm
of indignation roused by the conversion of Muttu Lakshmi.
The disturbance in popular feeling was so great as to be felt
far beyond the boundaries of the Mysore State. This was
probably due to the fact that this conversion was the result
of work done in the zenana. The Hindu has always been
extremely sensitive in the matter of his home life. Muttu
Lakshmi was the daughter of a Telugu Naidu, and had learned
much from conversation with a Christian woman of her
acquaintance. In course of time she became the pupil of Miss
Dunhill, a zenana visitor in Mr. Picken's Circuit, and gradually,
but at last completely, she became convinced in mind, and her
heart was given to Christ. Late one night she came to Mr.
Picken's house and declared her wish to be baptized, and after
an interview with her parents, in which both affection and
vituperation were freely employed to induce her to abandon
her purpose, she was received into the fellowship of the Christian
Church. Legal proceedings were threatened, but were not
carried into effect, there being no question as to the age, the
intelligence, and the conviction of the convert. So much
feeling was, however, aroused that for some time all zenanas
were closed against Christian visitors, and there was a heavy
decline in the attendance of girls at the Mission schools. Opposi
tion was shown to Preachers in the streets, and argument and
abuse were frequently used against the Missionary and his
Assistants. A ' Hindu Tract Society ' was formed for the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 291

preparation and distribution of anti-Christian literature, its
writers availing themselves largely of the productions of Col.
Ingersoll and other writers in both Europe and America. Such
opposition was welcome to the Missionaries. It favoured
inquiry, and was infinitely preferable to the far more deadly
apathy which obtained in some places. A considerable
extension involving the Tamil and English Circuits took place
in this period. By an interchange of property in different
parts of the Bangalore Cantonment the efficiency of both
Circuits was largely increased.

Yet another movement in this decade calls for notice, for
it was now that the Joyful News Evangelists1 appeared in
India. Of their success in Africa and in China we have written
elsewhere. Excellent representatives of the movement were
sent to Mysore, and one of them, Mr. W. Simpson, con
tinued to labour in this District until his death in 1897.
Four other agents were associated with Mr. Simpson in his
work, of whom one, Mr. Edlin, died in 1889. Messrs. E.
Adkin, J. Harris, and C. Swann subsequently joined Simpson,
and served for some few years at Davangere. The last of
these laymen Missionaries to leave the District was Mr. Adkin
in 1897. The Joyful News Mission did not seem to be as
successful in India as it proved to be in China.

Henry Haigh was a great idealist. His mind was quick in
grasping large conceptions of missionary operations, and the
enthusiasm with which he set to work to bring those concep
tions to good effect was boundless. His schemes of work were
often so far in advance of the actual present that they were
sometimes received with hesitation and misgiving by his
colleagues, but there was no gainsaying the fact that they were
finely conceived, and on a large and generous scale. He had
great gifts in utterance and wielded a fluent pen. During the
year 1883-1884 he was stationed at Gubbi, and was appointed
editor of The Harvest Field. He soon secured for that journal
an almost universal respect in India. It became the recognized
organ for the interchange of thought on missionary questions
in all the Churches. While he was in Gubbi he conceived the
idea of a Christian newspaper printed in Kanarese, to con
tribute to the general enlightenment of the people, to advocate
the highest moral standpoint in all public questions, and to

1 See Vol. I., p. 141.

292 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

bear a direct witness to the power of Christ to attain it. He
saw that such a paper might penetrate into remote villages,
never visited by a Missionary, and might become a great
factor in Christianizing the thought of its readers and thus
preparing the way for Christ Himself. On his return from
furlough in 1887 he brought out the first number of the
Vrittanta Patrike, which was printed in Bangalore, but in 1889
he was removed to Mysore City, and there, in conjunction
with the writer of this History, he initiated what was called
' The Forward Movement in Mysore.' As most of the projects
then formed affected the work directly or indirectly throughout
the District, a brief reference to them must here be made.
The situation in Mysore City was as follows : Haigh was in
charge of the home for boys who attended the high school,
where they came under the care and tuition of Holdsworth.
The boys occupied a building, situated in Haigh's compound,
which might easily be adapted to the purpose of a Mission
Press, which by that time he had determined to set up. Holds-
worth's house was at the far eastern boundary of the city,
and it soon became evident that the extension of the city — a
matter in which the Maharaja took the greatest interest —
was towards the west. It seemed that in a short time the
second Missionary in Mysore would be left far away from the
centre of life in the city. Holdsworth on his side was anxious
to have the Christian boys under his pastoral as well as his
educational direction, and thought it desirable to associate
with the training of boys in the Arts course the training of
Christian teachers for the many schools of the District. The
two Missionaries, therefore, agreed to seek a site in the new
city which was rising up in the west and to erect a building
which should be at once a hostel for Christian boys and a
Normal School for the District. This was eventually done,
and ' Hardwicke College ' was built, largely through a
munificent donation given by ladies in Adelaide, who attached
the one condition to their gift that the building should bear
the name of their own educational establishment in Adelaide.
Haigh thus acquired the building necessary for his press, and
it entered upon what was to prove a history of ever-increasing
influence in the Mysore country.

With this scheme there went another. There were at that
time schools for girls in Mysore City, and the supervision of

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 293

these was carried on largely by the wives of the Missionaries.
It was resolved to seek the aid of workers from the Women's
Auxiliary. But Haigh had been anxious for some time to
secure for such workers a hostel in which women might live
together during their first years in the country, learning the
language and studying the thought and customs of the women
among whom they were to work. It was found possible to
enlarge Hardwicke College so as to form a temporary hostel
for women workers, and after some hesitation the scheme was
accepted by the Auxiliary. The first two ladies from England
were Miss A. B. Cooke and Miss F. Martin. These were
followed in a few years by Miss D. Vickers, Miss Edith Broad-
bent, and Miss Lamb. Other ladies came from Australia,
but these were not able to remain for any length of time.

A considerable Christian community was now gathering
in and around Hardwicke College, and during furlough Holds-
worth was able to secure gifts from friends in England which
enabled him to erect a chapel in close proximity to Hard
wicke College. Within a few years the Methodist Church
was firmly established in the heart of the new suburb of
Mysore City. How great a centre of educational work Hard
wicke College became may be judged from the fact
that in 1912 it found room for the following institutions :
a boarding school of fifty-nine Christian boys, an English-
Kanarese school of a hundred and twenty boys, of whom forty
were Christians, a commercial school of sixty pupils, and a
theological and training institution in which were ten students.
It also found room for a number of Christian young men at
work in the city, who used it as a hostel. By that time the
lady workers had removed from the college. There were
other schemes discussed in those days, such as a boarding
school for girls and a hospital for women. These, too, have
come into being, but the story of their inception belongs to a
later period.

There seemed at that time to be the promise of a large
ingathering into the Church from the villages in the Mysore
City Circuit. There were inquirers in parcheris occupied by
outcastes near Mysore, and in out-stations such as Hunsur
and Mandya there were those who were under strong Christian
influence, but family ties, rights of inheritance, and a natural
hesitation to break away from the old life caused many to hold

294 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

back. The most hopeful movement was one which during
the superintendence of the Rev. G. W. Sawday has been so
developed as to approximate to the general movement of a
whole community towards Christianity. About thirty-six
miles south-east of Mysore is the town of Chamrajnagar, to
which a Catechist was sent in 1886, and much work was
done in the villages near, apparently without result. A
villager from this neighbourhood went to Ceylon in 1873 to
work on the coffee estates in that island. There he came under
the influence of those who were connected with the C.M.S.
Coolies Mission, and was baptized. In 1893 he returned to
his native village, and it soon became evident that he would
bring others with himself into the fellowship of the Church.
Shortly after his return another villager, who had made no
profession of Christianity, brought his son to Mr. Holdsworth
and asked that the boy might be admitted to Hardwicke
College to be trained with the Christian boys. It was pointed
out that if this were done the boy might wish to become a
Christian, but the father saw no objection in this, and the boy
remained in the College for several weeks — the first instance
in Mysore of a non-Christian boy in a Christian boarding school.
After some weeks, during which the boy's interest in
Christianity was very marked, his relatives appeared, and
demanded that the boy should return, the father being unable
to resist his relatives in the matter. All this showed that
the seed of the Kingdom had found a lodgement in the villages
of Mysore. For some years nothing more transpired, but in
1908 Mr. Sawday was able to baptize thirty-eight persons from
these villages, and every year since has witnessed the growth
of the little Church thus formed. Much work, demanding
infinite patience, and the love which creates confidence and
trust, was necessary before these timid villagers, who had
been brought under the domination of persons belonging to a
higher caste, could be emboldened to give themselves to
Christ. It became necessary in many instances to release
children whose life-service had been pledged by their parents
in redemption of financial obligation. Promising boys were
sent to Hardwicke College, and girls were taken into the
boarding school in Mysore City. To-day in that group of
villages there is a Church rich in real spiritual experience,
full of zeal for the salvation of their neighbours, and number-

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 295

ing five hundred souls, nearly as many as there were in the
whole area of the Mysore Mission when Thomas Hodson left
India.

Another hopeful centre of village Methodism in the Mysore
District is to be found in Bommanahalli, and its story illustrates
both the far-flung fellowship of the Methodist Church and the
uplifting power of Christ in the lives of the most degraded.
The work began with the conversion of a Korama emigrant
under the ministry of the Rev. S. H. Stott in Natal.1 Now
the Koramas belong to the gipsy community, and in the
Mysore country they were notorious for crimes of which
stealing was probably the least. But Premadasa found in
Natal that Christ laid His hand upon even such as he, and
when he surrendered to that Divine arrest he did so with all
his heart. He rose from the position of an ordinary labourer
in Natal to that of an overseer, and after ten years returned
to his village in India a comparatively wealthy man. He
gathered his people together, and preached to them the Christ
who had enriched his own soul, until gradually a small Christian
community came into being and settled down at Bommana
halli, in the Hassan Circuit. Vedamitra — the son of Premadasa
— was educated in Bangalore, and became a greatly respected
teacher in the Mysore high school. He also assisted Mr.
Haigh in the preparation of Christian literature, as he had an
excellent command of both English and Kanarese. In his
father's village the humble chapel built of mud and the roughest
tiling gave way to a more substantial and seemly building,
and every house in that village is a Christian home. From
that village the light has spread to other centres where Koramas
are to be found, and wherever it comes the darkness passes
away, and Christ is revealed as the power of God lifting the
poor out of the dung-hill, and making the gipsy thief His own
witness to the Saviour of all men.

The story of the Namadaris is well told by the Rev. A. E.
Nightingale in the Foreign Field of 1906, pp. 433 ff. The
Namadaris are a remarkable tribe of Sudra cultivators inhabit
ing the less frequented regions which lie to the north-west of
the Mysore State. In every chief town in this region the
head-man is a Namadari holding an hereditary office . There
are about thirty thousand of these people in the Nagar Division

1 See above, p. 35, and Vol. IV., p. 303.

296 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

of the Province, and their friendliness to Missionaries who
visited that part of the country had long been recognized. One
of these men — Giriappa — came into possession of the Vrittanta
Patrike, the newspaper published by Mr. Haigh,and influenced by
what he read in it, he set himself to introduce certain measures
of social reform among his people. These measures, which
were afterwards embodied in a Manifesto, are significant.
They indicate the points at which the Hindu finds himself
in need of a new order of life. The sale of brides and the
tax on brides were to be discontinued ; widow remarriage was
to be permitted ; education was to be furthered in every
possible way. When Christ comes into contact with humanity
the status and the honour of woman at once are affected, and
the enlightenment of the mind becomes a first necessity.

In 1899 Giriappa listened to a sermon preached in Shimoga,
and from that day he resolved to give himself to Christ. He
obtained a Bible and studied it in secret. Then he wrote to
the Missionary asking that a Catechist might be sent to teach
him the way more perfectly. In 1902 he wrote to the editor
of the Vrittanta Patrike a letter full of pathetic entreaty to
the following effect :

The Wesleyan Mission is working in many parts of the Province,
but it has not come to these remote jungle regions. Will not the
Wesleyan Mission give us schools and preaching-places ? Do not we,
who are not Brahmans, wish to walk in the right way ? Ah ! Lord of
Heaven ! Have mercy on us sinners. Through Thy disciples send
Thy true Gospel quickly to these parts. I have no strength to show
any earnestness in petition or in prayer, for I am full of ignorance.
Thy will be done.

In the same year Giriappa accompanied Mr. Nightingale to
Tumkur, where in the Evangelists' Convention he made an open
confession of Christ. An Evangelist was sent to his village,
though that meant abandoning the work only recently begun
in Scringapatam, so difficult it was to provide for the evan
gelization of a Province left to the care of the Wesleyan Church.
The next step was that Giriappa resigned his position as agent
of the local Guru. This was a position of great influence, but
Giriappa found it incompatible with his new relation to Christ.
This was a great step in advance, but baptism was still delayed.
Meantime his friend Ramana, who was said to be one of the
wealthiest men in the neighbourhood, came under the same

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 297

gracious influence, and paid down the whole sura required
for a year's expense in maintaining a school in his village. A
Rest House, originally built for the use of Brahmans, was also
handed over to the Mission to be used for a school. Other
schools were opened in adjacent villages, and another inquirer
named Chinnappa was discovered in Mandagadde, thirty miles
distant from Giriappa's village. Three months later Chinnappa,
his wife, and his brother were all received into the Church by
baptism. By this time the Brahmans were thoroughly alarmed
and were putting forth great efforts to check the movement
among the Namadaris. If a Missionary could have been
appointed to reside among these people to give courage and a
measure of protection to timid folk, there might have followed
the general movement towards Christ which many have ex
pected would one day come. Meantime a woman had gone
to shepherd this little flick in the wilderness. In 1907 Miss
Campbell went as Nursing Sister to the Mysore Hospital, and
after furlough in England, she returned in 1912 to work among
the Namadaris. A small Dispensary was opened at Manda
gadde, and in this little village in the heart of a remote district
where no other European is to be found, a brave and loving
woman ministers to those who need her service and her skill.
In the Centenary year the situation of the Namadari movement
was as we have now related, but at any moment the determin
ing factor may appear, the completing grace be given, and a
whole community surrender to the love of God in Jesus Christ.
In relating the story of these movements in the villages we
have departed from the strictly chronological sequence of
events, and we must now return to the period covered by the
decade of the 'nineties. No less than eighteen Missionaries
were sent to the Mysore District during the ten years. Several
of these served for only a brief period, failure of health account
ing for the brevity of their service. Romilly Hall Ingram
(1894-1896) died after two years of service. Those who were
able to remain on the field for more than five years were :
A. Dumbarton (1890-1899), E. W. Redfern (1893-1904), E. W.
Thompson (1894-1919), W. H. Thorp (1896-), E. S. Edwards
(1896-), F. Goodwill (1898-), A. E. Nightingale (1899-1920),
W. B. Trewhella (1899-1909). It will be seen that three of
these are still on the field, and one of them, the Rev. W. H.
Thorp, is now the Chairman of the District. E. W. Thompson,

298 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

after twenty-five years of distinguished service, returned to
England and was elected one of the Secretaries of the Society
in 1919. At the beginning of the decade the Rev. J. Hudson
was still the Chairman of the District, and his administration
elicited high commendation from the Committee in England,
while his personal influence upon Hindus was at its highest.
By his colleagues he was greatly beloved, and his judgement
could always be accepted as balanced and reliable. Often,
too, there was a shrewdness in his pronouncements which
indicated a mind that was always alert and a strong sense of
humour. Those who may wish to see into the mind of one of
the truest Missionary statesmen of the Methodist Church,
should read the article written by him on ' The Training of
Missionaries ' in Work and Workers, 1895, p. 12. Mr. Hudson's
judgement on this all-important question is as apposite to
the discussions of to-day as it was weighty and convincing
when first expressed. Another equally fine pronounce
ment on the question of Native Ministers and the Wesleyan
Conference appears in Work and Workers, 1893, pp. 502ff.
In 1895 he had completed the thirty-third year of his service.
For seventeen years he had been Chairman of the District,
and it was hoped that there were yet years to come in which
he would continue to guide the Methodist Church in the Mysore.
But in April, 1896, after a short illness, he was called to higher
service, and the Mysore Mission lost the second of the two
great administrators who had done so much to form and build
up the Church among the Kanarese people. He was followed
in the Chair of the District by the Rev. J. A. Vanes, who is
still (1923) at work in Shimoga, after some years spent in
England, where he served as tutor in New Testament subjects
in Richmond College.

The same year saw the death of another Missionary. If
Josiah Hudson was great in attainment, Romilly Hall Ingram
was great in promise. Death removed within the space of a
few weeks the Missionary statesman ripe in experience, and
the young Missionary whose course was scarcely begun.
Ingram joined the Staff of the District in 1894, and few men
have entered upon their service with brighter prospects than
he did. A brilliant scholar in science, he had also the tem
perament which is always particularly attractive to Hindus.
To him the obligation of duty was never relaxed, and he

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 299

demanded a similar obedience from those with whom he had to
do, whether they were at work or at play. But with that
somewhat imperious demand, there went a genuine and most
tender sympathy with all that was best in them, and this
bound his students in the Mysore High School to him in a bond
so close that it seemed as though he might have led them any
where, and for him there was but one goal — the love of God in
Christ Jesus. In February, 1896, only two years after his
arrival in the country, he was exposed to infection from
smallpox while seeking to help one of his students, and almost
as soon as the disease was diagnosed he passed away. His
students loved him ; and we need offer no higher tribute to
his worth. A small laboratory and a library were added to
the high school as a memorial of a teacher who was greatly
beloved. Some years after the staff lost the service of another
young Missionary of exceptional promise. E. W. Redfern was
a man of great force of character, and he was endowed with
intellectual gifts which marked him out for high distinction.
His death, in 1904, shortly after his return from furlough,
brought to his colleagues the sense of a great loss to the Church,
and of unspeakable sorrow to themselves. During his furlough
he had been able to collect a considerable sum of money in the
hope of building a hospital in Hassan, the Circuit to which
he was appointed. The hospital was built and opened in 1906,
and forms to-day the Memorial of one who loved the work
committed to him, and laid down his life in the service to
which he had wholly given himself.

The 'nineties were made memorable by the outbreak of the
Bubonic Plague. In 1896 the first cases occurred in Bombay,
and in the following year it appeared in Bangalore. Of the
panic that prevailed wherever this disease appeared it is
difficult to write in few words ; but inasmuch as it proved to
be a severe test of the character of the Christian community,
and because it led to a notable extension in the City of Mysore,
some reference must be made in these pages. Terror was
created by the disease itself, but this was immeasurably in
creased by the preventive and remedial measures taken by
the Government, and it reached at last the height at which
it broke through the universal instinct which secures reverence
for the dead, and every other feeling of decency. The dead
bodies of relatives were flung into the streets and lanes of the

300 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

towns, and in some cases the faces of the dead were obliterated
by burning oil in order that recognition might be made im
possible, since recognition would lead to the segregation of
those of the family that still survived. All who could do so
fled from the infected towns. The contrast with all this
afforded in the Christian Church was most marked. The people
thankfully accepted such means of protection as were put
before them by the Missionaries. Instead of unreasoning
panic they showed a ready obedience to the call of law and
order, and then they quietly awaited whatever discipline God
might call them to accept. They took refuge under the wings
of the Almighty. In 1898 the pestilence appeared in Mysore
City, and led to a great change in the environment of the
Church. Most of the Christians lived in the Pariah quarter
of Viranageri, where every law of sanitation was defied, and
where the moral atmosphere was equally bad. The people
were too poor to think of leaving the unwholesome hovels in
which they had lived, but the plague which, it was feared,
would levy a heavy toll on their numbers, brought them in
stead a happy release from their surroundings of dirt and
degradation. The Government measures were all in the
direction of getting the people to vacate congested and in
sanitary quarters of the city, and it offered vacant sites on the
outskirts of the city to those who would abandon condemned
houses. Mr. Holdsworth, who was at that time the Superin
tendent of the Circuit, took advantage of this offer, and secured
for the Christians a piece of land that was clean and not too
far removed from the neighbourhood of their daily work. All
the members of the Church were at first housed in huts and
sheds, but these were so arranged as to allow of their being
replaced by more substantial buildings later on. Within a
year the entire Church was housed in conditions which were
a vast improvement on anything known before, and the settle
ment received the name of Karunapura, ' The City of Mercy.'
For the mercy of God was shown in the almost complete
immunity of the Christian people though thousands were
smitten down in the city to which they belonged, and Govern
ment officers came to see what had contributed to this freedom
from disease among the Christians. In 1902 there was another
severe outbreak of plague, but the ' City of Mercy ' was again
untouched. From that time of trial the Church in Mysore has

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 301

possessed a sense of both unity and self-respect which it had
not been able to realize before. But the incidence of plague
had another far-reaching effect upon the Missionary situation
in Mysore, for it was in this time of sickness that the idea of a
Mission Hospital began to take form, and a preliminary in
spection of possible sites had already been made when in 1901
the time came for Mr. and Mrs. Holdsworth to return to England.
Shortly after her return the latter was herself smitten down
with disease, but before she died she had the joy of knowing
that the hospital which had been so much in her thought and
purpose, while she ministered to the Christian people of
Viranageri, was on its way to completion. Through the self-
denying labour and extraordinary efficiency of the Rev. G. W.
Sawday the hospital was built, and it is to-day one of the
largest and best equipped Mission hospitals in India. It was
opened by the Maharaja of Mysore, and was consecrated to
the service of God in the ministry of healing and to the memory
of Mary Calvert Holdsworth.

So much has been said in previous pages of the disabilities
arising from English work undertaken by Missionaries that
reference should be made here to the successful work of this
kind in Bangalore, but it must be remembered that its success
was due to the fact that Missionaries were distinctly set apart
for this service, and were not expected to take any part in
either the Tamil or the Kanarese work. Such Ministers as
the Revs. E. R. Eslick (1879-1884), Amos Burnet (1882-1893),
G. C. Walker (1900-1906), and others who served for shorter
periods, built up at the cost of much patience and fidelity a
strong and prosperous Church. In 1899 there were three
chapels in Bangalore, and three on the gold-fields of Kolar.
The Circuit also provided for two day schools, a free school
for poorer children, and an orphanage in which some fifty
destitute Eurasian children found a home. In addition to
these there was a Home for the poor which provided free
quarters for five widows, and a daily ration of food for forty
persons whose normal condition was one of starvation. The
Circuit also offered to the many British soldiers stationed in
the Cantonment the largest and most commodious ' Soldiers'
Home ' in the East.

At the close of the century the stage reached by the Mysore
Mission may be seen from the following tabulation.

302 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

In the English Circuit there were three European Mission
aries ministering to a hundred and seventy members and nine
hundred baptized adherents.

On the Tamil side there were two Circuits with one
European Missionary and three Indian Ministers. The mem
bership in the Circuits was five hundred and sixty-nine.

The Kanarese work showed eight Circuits in which ten
European and six Indian Ministers were engaged. The full
membership was more than nine hundred, and there were
considerably more than two thousand baptized adherents.
There was a further indigenous agency consisting of forty-
six Evangelists, sixty-five Local Preachers, and sixty class
leaders.

The work among women and girls was carried on by forty-
eight European and Indian women. Chapels for public
worship numbered twenty-nine, and there was a Theological
Institution for training the preachers who were to conduct
the worship. On the educational side there were eight Christian
boarding schools and orphanages, two high schools, sixty-
eight vernacular schools for boys and fifty-six for girls, while
the Mission Press may well be reckoned among the educational
agencies of the District. In one year its output of Christian
literature amounted to more than four million pages.

The whole of this organization was administered by the
Rev. J. A. Vanes, and it was done with great ability and with
true devotion to the highest interests of the Church, but in
1903 Mr. Vanes returned to England. He was followed in
the administration of the District by the Rev. D. A. Rees,
who was still in the chair of the District in 1913.

Within the years which intervened between 1900 and
1916, there were added to this already extensive organiza
tion at least five institutions of first importance. These con
sisted of two Normal Schools, one for men at Tumkur and the
other for women in Bangalore. The former was opened in
1916, and the latter in 1903. The third institution was in
some respects the most appealing of the many varieties of
work undertaken in the District. In 1905 Miss White, who
had come from Tasmania in 1885 to work as one of the Agents
of the Women's Auxiliary, opened a Home for fallen women,
and for young widows who might wish to be protected from
falling. This Institution was housed at first in such buildings

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 303

as were available, but permanent quarters were provided at
last by the transference of the Jubilee Home to the old boarding
school premises in 1911. The Home is not limited by any
denominational exclusiveness, and among the gifts which
went to its erection it is pleasing to record one from the Church
of England Zenana Mission, which also was at work in Bangalore.
Into this Home for those to whom ' Home ' was non-existent,
young women from most of the Missionary Societies in South
India are freely admitted. At one time five different languages
were spoken within its walls. Suitable industries are taught
to its inmates. Many women have found their way to Christ
after entering the Home, and not a few happy marriages have
taken place. No praise is too high for this branch of work.
It is entirely ' after the mind of ' Him who had His gracious
word of forgiveness for sinful women. Its inception and the
whole character of its service reflect the spirit of its founder,
Miss White. Her service was instinct with sanity and sym
pathy, and the simplicity of her devotion to Christ enabled
her to solve many a perplexing problem. She has now retired
from the work to which she gave so many years of her life,
but that work remains a contribution which has brought new
hope and life to many a woman who had lost the one and might
well have lost the other.

The two remaining institutions were the memorial hospitals
already mentioned, one in Hassan and the other in Mysore
City. Other memorial buildings which commemorate the
service of devoted Missionaries, while they add grace and
strength to the Church, are the William Arthur Memorial
Church in Gubbi, and the beautiful church erected to the
memory of Josiah Hudson in Bangalore in the year 1904. In
addition to these, the Calvert Girls' Home was built in Mysore
(1901), and the Girls' Normal School in Bangalore (1911),
and though the extension belongs to a period subsequent to
the Centenary year, we may nevertheless mention here the
raising of the Girls' Tamil Boarding School in Bangalore to
the grade of a high school. This was done in 1914.

Another outpost of the District is to be found in Ootacamund,
where work among the Tamils was begun in 1862. For many
years an Indian Minister or a Catechist has laboured among
those drawn to this beautiful hill station by Government or
domestic service. Ootacamund is well known as a health

304 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

resort. Cradled among the hills of the Nilgiri range, it affords
in the hottest season of the year a climate which has been
described as 'the finest in the world.' During those months
of the year in which life on the plains is all but unbearable
for Europeans, Ootacamund becomes the administrative
centre of the Madras Government, and many European
civilians have chosen this favoured place for a residence during
the years of their retirement. As a consequence, a consider
able Tamil population is to be found here. The Mysore
Mission owns a house here, and many a Missionary has been
able to recruit health and strength by a few weeks of rest in
Ootacamund, but it has never been able to spare a Missionary
to reside here, and work among the Tamil Christians of the
neighbourhood has been carried on by Indian Ministers. In
the Centenary year there was a membership of ninety-nine.

The Synod of 1904 was, in some respects, the most remark
able in the history of the Mysore Mission. Far reaching
schemes were brought forward, and it is to be noted that they
were not schemes that owed their origin to the imagination
of enthusiastic men, and external to the life of the Church.
They were, on the contrary, the natural product of that life.
They were the efflorescence of a vitality inherent in the Church.
Their necessity was created by an impulse from within, and
the Church moved forward under the impulse of its own
expanding life. Thus a second Missionary was sought for
both Hassan and Shimoga. The movement of villagers
within these Circuits towards Christ made it almost unbearable
that the solitary Missionary in charge of each should be bound
to the central station by the claims of work more or less
official and administrative. It was held by many that a
similar claim should be put forward on behalf of the Mysore
City Circuit, and for precisely the same reason ; but it indicates
the urgency of the need in the two first mentioned Circuits
that the claims of Mysore were deferred lest the demand
for three men should make it less likely that provision should
be made for the more remote Circuits.

A request for the appointment of a Missionary to serve as
Touring Evangelist in all parts of the District without the
embarrassments arising from Circuit organization, arose from
the same need of responding to the call of the villages. This
appointment was actually secured through the liberality of

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 305

those who were impressed by Mr. Tomlinson's appeal in this
matter, and on his return from furlough, he himself was
appointed to this most exacting but most fruitful ministry.

One of the great territorial divisions of the Mysore State/
lying within the area entrusted to the Wesleyan Missionary
Society, is Chitaldrug. This had never been occupied by a
European Missionary, and a solitary Evangelist represented
' the army of occupation.' It was now asked that a European
Missionary should be sent to take up work in the neglected
area. Another neglected sphere of work was ethnological
rather than geographical. The survivors of the Muhammadan
tyranny of Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan remain a distinct
community in the Mysore Province of to-day. The Moslems
in this State number three hundred thousand, and it is an
outstanding and long-standing reproach to the Methodist
Church that no attempt has yet been made to evangelize them.
It was asked that another Missionary might be definitely
appointed to remove this reproach, and to bring before the
Muhammadans the claims of One who is greater than the
Prophet to whom they give such complete allegiance.

Yet another scheme arose by way of protest against the
limitations imposed upon the work already being done, and,
we repeat, it was the ferment of abundant life which made
those limitations no longer endurable. Educational work
in the Mysore District was limited to the grade of students
preparing for the Matriculation examination of the Madras
University. Both the Madras and the Negapatam Missions
were happier in that they could still retain under Christian
influence the undergraduates of that University. But their
brethren in the Mysore District saw year by year their most
promising students pass into the confessedly non-religious
atmosphere of Government Colleges. It was thought that
this might be partly remedied by the appointment of a Mis
sionary wholly devoted to work among the educated classes
in the province, and another Missionary was sought to make
the appointment possible.

In addition to all this, the inception of medical work in
this District belongs to this period. It was decided that
hospitals should be built both in the City of Mysore and in
Hassan. A home for widows in Tumkur and the rescue
home for those who had fallen were also brought forward as

3o6 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

necessary adjuncts to the work being done for women. The
former has not yet been built.

Last of all — but by no means least — it was hoped to make
an extensive enlargement in the staff of Indian agents.

Our readers will be overwhelmed by this programme of
extension, and many of its items are still awaiting the decision
of the Church to make them actual features of its work in
this province. But the enumeration is given in detail as
indicating a marvellous ferment of life in the Church of this
period. Whether the multiplying cells are to issue in a fruitful
growth is a question which the Methodist Church in England
must answer for itself. On the field the conditions are entirely
favourable to that growth. The fact is that the leaven was
now reaching out to an indefinite enlargement in the area of
its influence.

The Missionaries who joined the Mysore staff during this
closing period of our review were seventeen in number, and,
omitting the names of those who for a variety of reasons did
not serve for more than five years, they were as follows : G.
C. Walker (1900-1906), H. Spencer (1900-), W. E. Tomlinson
(1901-), E. V. Paget (1902-), R. W. Boote (1903-), A. Brock-
bank (1904-), A. R. Fuller (1905-), J- Redmond (1905-1911),
A. R. Slater (1906-), and W. Perston (1911-)- Writing in
1923, we have the pleasing duty to record that six of these are
still at work on the field.

The eulogy of Missionaries still happily with us does not
fall within the compass of an historian's work, and any attempt
in this direction would quite properly be resented by them.
But this at least may be said, that a glance at the stations of
this District as published in the Minutes of Conference for 1922,
will show that of nineteen Missionaries no less than twelve
have completed twenty years of service, and four of these have
completed forty-five. It is in this continuity of service that
we find one explanation of the growth of the Methodist Church
in the Mysore District. What is to be said of the women
who have served with no less fidelity in this field ? Since 1860,
when the first representative of the Women's Auxiliary
appeared in Bangalore, no fewer than forty-nine have served
their needy sisters in India. Many of these, it is true, have
served for only a few years. English women have suffered
from the strain of life in India to a greater extent than men

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 307

have done, but Miss C. Parsons has been able to remain at
work for thirty-seven years, Miss R. White for thirty-four,
and Miss A. B. Cooke for twenty-five. Each of these in her
own sphere has accomplished a work such as only a woman
could attempt, and the record of it is to be found in the lives
of those whom they have served. Others have married, but
after marriage they still continued faithfully and lovingly the
work which they came to India to do in the name of Christ.
Miss Evelyn Vickers and Dr. Clara J. Alexander have their
names written on the sacred roll of those who have given life
itself as the pledge of their devotion.

The Indian Ministers of the District have been for the most
part men of whom the Methodist Church may well be proud.
There have not been found among them any of outstanding
scholarship, but they have been faithful Ministers of Jesus
Christ, and that is more than scholarship. Their work has
been arduous in the extreme, and it has often been carried
on at great disadvantage, but their character has been such as
adorned the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.1 They
have been loved and respected by their European brethren,
and it has been largely owing to their pastoral care that the
' little flock ' in Mysore has been led to that point in spiritual
experience which it has reached to-day.

If our readers would see the leaven of Christianity illustrated
by the story of the Mysore Mission, they must bear in mind
at least two facts. One is that the Mysore State is under a
Native administration, and all legislative reforms are the
product of moral convictions held by those who direct affairs
of State in this Province. The other is that from the earliest
days the Missionaries in this Province have sought to enlighten
the mind, and to quicken a conscience which in the course
of centuries had almost ceased to work in the moral life of the
people. They sought to present the great moral verities of
the Christian faith in such a manner as to create in the thought
of men a view of the Christian standard of life as a possible
and necessary ideal. They felt that the formation of a new
moral sense was the best preparation for the Gospel which
declares the forgiveness of sin and a new life in Christ. To
this end they have made education and the dissemination of

1 The present writer may be forgiven if he takes this opportunity of offerng to
his colleagues of a bygone day the tribute of his reverence and affection.

3o8 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

truth by means of Christian literature a prominent, though
by no means an exclusive, feature of their work. Very many
of the officers of Government have at one time or another
been students in the schools of the Mission, and they have
always been ready to acknowledge their indebtedness to their
teachers. It is perhaps too much to claim that the Christian
izing influence of such work has given to the Mysore State the
pre-eminence which it has now secured as an enlightened and
progressive Administration, but that it has been profoundly
influenced by the Christian ideal is beyond question, and all
reforms advanced by the State are in the direction of a
Christian interpretation of moral obligations. The barest
enumeration of the most prominent of these is all that can be
attempted in these pages.

The Census of 1893 revealed the fact that one in five of all
women and girls in the Province was a widow, and more than
three thousand five hundred of these widows were under ten
years of age. More than eleven thousand girls under four
years of age were returned as married. In the Representative
Assembly— an indigenous feature of the native administration
—an earnest request was made during the sessions of 1891
that Government would legislate with a view to making the
marriage of infants under a certain age a penal offence, and
two years later a measure was brought forward and passed
into law prohibiting marriage between boys under fourteen
and girls under eight years of age. It also prohibited marriage
between men of more than fifty and girls of less than fourteen
years. This was the first effort made in India towards lessening
the evil of child-marriage and widowhood.

In 1910 Government brought forward another measure
forbidding the employment of Devadasis — that is, of women
dedicated to immorality by religious rites— in all State-aided
temples, and there have been cases in which grossly indecent
panels in temple-cars and other religious structures have been
removed. In such matters the working of a moral sense
which makes that which was even consecrated to religious use
an intolerable offence is indisputable.

Another most significant reform is really post-Centenary,
but a reference to it may be allowed. It is that which threw
open all State schools to students of the Panchama class— an
innovation which would have been impossible in former days,

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 309

but which is now enforced in the face of all restrictions imposed
by caste, as just and reasonable. Of the advance made in
securing the education of women and girls we have written
in another chapter.1

The fact is, that all moral and religious ideas have been
changed and elevated within the century of Mission work in this
Province, and that the Brahmans of a hundred years ago would
hnd themselves — if they were to return — in a new world of
religious thought and practice. Of course, national pride and
prejudice resent the ascription of such reforms to the Christian
interpretation of life and duty, but such resentment is but for
the moment, and when the love of God in Christ Jesus has
broken down the barriers of national vanity, those who now
claim such higher moral conceptions as their own will

Yield all homage to the name

Of Him who made them common coin.

The celebration of the Centenary in the Mysore District was
very remarkable. During the year preceding it, conventions
had been held in the several Circuits for the deepening of
spiritual life in the Church. Out of their poverty the members
of that Church contributed to the Centenary Fund the equiva
lent of a thousand pounds, and a great company from all
parts of the Province assembled in Bangalore on October 6,
1913, to review the mercies of God during the century that had
passed, to render thanks for the light and freedom which had
been brought into their lives, and to consecrate themselves
afresh to the service of Christ. The great procession through
the City of Bangalore was an incident which could not fail to
impress the crowd of Hindus that watched it. Two thousand
Christians marched through the streets singing the songs of
Zion as they marched, men and women in equal dignity and
self-respect. There were girls from the boarding schools,
mothers and teachers of the days to come ; women from the
Rescue Home who had learned there that Christ has His word
of forgiveness for those who had sinned ; artisans, peasants,
and students ; Catechists and Indian Ministers ; Pariah converts
from the villages of Kastur, and the Missionaries who stood
for those who had laboured in days when there was no Church

1 See p. 157.

3io PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

at all in the Mysore State ; all these gathered at last in front
of the Hudson Memorial Church, and sang with a fervour
which can have been seldom realized, ' All hail the power of
Jesus' Name.' It was a worthy theme of song and a worthy
rendezvous. Josiah Hudson had given himself in the service
of the Kanarese people, and had never lost his faith in the
power of Jesus' name. Round and about the beautiful church
which forms his memorial the people whom he loved gathered
to praise the Saviour who had taught him the secret of that
love.

With this picture of a thankful and rejoicing Church our
record of the Mysore Mission must close. The fact of that
Church, and the promise of its future, may well prompt the
reader of its record to give thanks to Him who lifteth the poor
out of the dust and the needy out of the dung-hill, and sets him
among princes. Yet it is not in that Church alone, impres
sive as it is, that the full result of service in this field is to be
seen. In the social movements of the day, in the moral ideals
which, whether unacknowledged or confessed, now hold the
thought and purpose of all classes of society throughout the
State, in every effort to purge the practice of religion from that
which, once its pride, has now become its shame — in these
things untabulated, not to be measured, we may see the in
dubitable signs of the leaven of Christian truth working until
the whole be leavened. There is a whisper in the hearts of
men in the Mysore country, a secret which pride will not now
allow them to divulge, and that secret whisper is the Name
of Jesus.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 311

(iv.) THE HAIDARABAD DISTRICT : ' THE GOOD SAMARITAN '

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God is
ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho ; and lie
fell among robbers, which both stripped him and beat him, and departed,
leaving him half dead. . . . But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed,
came where he was, and when he saw him, he was moved with com
passion, and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them
oil and wine ; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an
inn, and took care of him. — LUKE x. 30-34.

The story of the Haidarabad Mission is the story of love in its ministry
to the alien, fallen, plundered, wounded unto death. Love awoke
trust in hearts that had all but lost the faculty of trust, and so men
came at last to ' live by faith in the Son of God who loved them and
gave Himself up for them.'

Few facts in the history of the Foreign Missionary enterprise
of the Methodist Church are more constant and more signi
ficant than the part played in the inception of Missions by the
Methodist soldier. We find him in New York and in Canada,
in Gibraltar, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Colombo, Madras,
and Hong Kong, and in each place it is he who gathers his
comrades together for prayer and mutual edification, builds
up ' a Society/ and appeals to the home Church for a Mis
sionary to be sent to instruct the Methodist congregation
which has come into being. In 1875 the Rev. R. W. Alien-
that much-loved friend of the British soldier — was bidding
farewell to some of the soldiers who were leaving Aldershot
for India. Among thei. was Sergeant Goodwin, of the
Bedfordshires, who had accepted Christ as the Captain of his
salvation. He had been a class leader and a local preacher
while at Aldershot, and Allen impressed upon him the duty
of continuing his service for Christ after he should arrive at
his destination. When in due course he found himself at
Secunderabad he wrote to the Chairman of the Madras District,

312 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

who happened at that time to be the Rev. Henry Little, and
the result of that letter was a visit paid by Henry Little and
William Burgess in December, 1878. There followed the
inception of the Haidarabad Mission, and the gathering of
many thousands into the Church of Christ. Sergeant Goodwin,
as he sat in the barrack-room at Secunderabad, never guessed
what would follow on the writing of that fateful letter. As
little do we guess to-day what the consequences may be to
our performance of some simple duty, some common act of
loyalty to Christ.

It was not indeed the first time that a Mission to the
Haidarabad State had been considered. As we have seen,
in 1862 Dr. Jenkins prospected the country, and his
report led the Committee to allocate the sum of five
thousand pounds from the ' Jubilee Fund ' to the purpose of
beginning work in that country. But nothing further had
been done, and we do not know what became of the money
thus allocated. When William Burgess came to Secunderabad
the initial expenses were met by the Synod of the Madras
District, which offered to forgo from its grant the sum of
five hundred pounds, a generous act on the part of men who
had not enough to meet the demands of their own work.
There were other preparations. They were not recognized
as such at the time, but ' who hath known the mind of the
Lord, or who hath been His counsellor ' ? In 1878 work was
begun in Madras among the Telugu-speaking people of that
city, and Mr. Burgess and a young evangelist, Mr. Benjamin
Wesley, of whom we shall have much to say, took up the
study of Telugu that they might minister to those in Madras
who used that language. This special work in Madras soon
came to an end, but it had served a larger purpose than was
seen at first in preparing for the Mission to Haidarabad the
two men who in the providence of God were to lay the founda
tions of a Church which is already a ^:eat Church, and is still
far from having reached its ultimate .evelopment. Haidarabad
appears as one of the ' Stations ' of the Methodist Church in
1880, and in the Centenary year the report shows a Christian
community of seventeen thousand persons in ten Circuits.
Of that community three thousand six hundred were recognized
as being in full Church membership, and seven thousand five
hundred more were on probation. No other District in India

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 313

shows anything approaching this growth within the space of
thirty- three years, and one of the first questions to be con
sidered is that of the differentiating conditions which led to
this startling contrast between the results of work in this
District and those which have followed upon the efforts of
Missionaries in other fields.

The first cause of this result is obviously to be found in the
fact that the pioneers in this field were in a position to profit
by the experience of their forerunners, and to avoid the
initial mistakes made in each of the preceding Missions. Of
the entanglements which beset the Missionaries in Madras
for so many years we have already written, and it is significant
that in his first letter to the Committee we find Mr. Burgess
making two very distinct points. The first was to the effect
that the Mission was to be carried on to a large extent by means
of an Indian Ministry, and the second was that the work
among the soldiers was to be undertaken by a European
Chaplain, specially designated for that purpose. ' For the
soldiers' work I must have a man from home.' We know the
genesis of that imperative demand. A little later we find the
Rev. Benjamin Pratt — the first European colleague of Mr.
Burgess — chafing under the restrictions imposed upon him
by military work while he was preparing for missionary
service. He says :

My English work divides my energies, and what is a still more serious
matter, my sympathies. So long as I remain an English Pastor I do
not think that I shall ever gain that fellowship with Hindus in their
ways of thought and modes of feeling which is the true foundation of
a successful missionary career.

Such words reveal an insight which explains much of the
subsequent success of the writer, while they lay down a
principle which Missionary Societies may well keep in
mind. These first Missionaries, then, were bent upon avoiding
the trammels which had hampered their forerunners in
Madras.

Another fruit of experience appears in the letter already
quoted from Mr. Burgess. He asks for a man to be sent out
at once to take up work at Yelgundel, a town distant from
Secunderabad about a hundred miles, and which would serve
to link the latter with Sironcha, the Station recommended

314 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

for occupation by Dr. Jenkins. Neither town was ever
occupied. The hand of God led in another direction, but
the mention of these village centres shows that from the
very first Burgess was bent upon beginning work in the
villages.

Yet another advantage which fell to the new Mission was
that the earliest efforts were made by men who were accli
matized, familiar with habits of life in India, and possessing
a knowledge of both Tamil and Telugu. In this alone the
founder of the Haidarabad Mission was far in advance of
James Lynch, and this knowledge of the vernacular makes
it impossible to set up any comparison between the initial
stages of the work done in the two Districts. We may well
consider too the advantage of beginning with so tried and
valued a fellow- worker as Benjamin Wesley. What would
not the first Missionaries to India have given if one such as
this able and trustworthy Minister could have stood by their
side?

It must not be thought for a moment that in thus seeking
to estimate the initial advantages of the Haidarabad Mission
we are in any way discounting the work accomplished in this
field. That work will always remain a triumph of insight
and organizing power. The conditions of successful service
were clearly seen from the first. They were accepted, and
then the work was urged on with a resolution and a force
which reveal the character of the men who began it. Mr.
Lamb1 speaks of the first year of the Mission as ' that breathless
year/ and his epithet is well chosen. The swift and relentless
energy of William Burgess brooked no delay, and in an
incredibly short space of time the central position was ' made
good/ and the nerves of living energy extended a hundred
miles to the north.

There is yet another advantage to be enumerated. In one
respect it was the most important of all, as its effects are
operative to this day in the area covered by this Mission. It
is to be found in the homogeneous character of the population
to whom the Missionaries made their chief appeal. As a
Muhammadan State, Haidarabad did not allow the Brahman
the dominant position which he held in other parts of India,
and Brahmanism was far from being the powerful social

1 The Gospel and the Mala, p. 8.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 315

factor which it was in the Negapatam District. The people
who resided beyond the municipal boundaries of Secunderabad
consisted in the main of Muhammadan ' over-lords ' and their
serfs. Work among Moslems was certainly contemplated,
and a movement in the direction of a school for Muhammadan
girls, and visits of women evangelists to the zenanas, was
actually begun in Haidarabad. But when the ' effectual
door ' which led to the heart of the Mala community was
flung wide, the tides of Missionary service ran swiftly along
the channels opened, and the Missionaries concentrated their
efforts upon those who were willing to hear and to obey the
Gospel call. This element of exclusiveness — if indeed such
a word can be used in this connexion — was never accepted as
a policy, but the fact was that the many accessions from among
the Malas so engrossed and exhausted the resources of the
Mission that its agents were known locally as ' the Mala
Padres.' The intended reproach became a distinction of
honour. The ' stigma ' was transfigured into the ' mark of
the Lord Jesus.'

Caste, of course, threatened to prevent the work of the
Church as it had done in South India, but where the Brahman
priest is shorn of ' monarchical ' power caste is deprived of
half its strength. Its power to resist the Church was, however,
felt even here. In 1887 a great harvest was reaped in the
Karim Nagar Circuit. Among the two hundred and seventy-
four persons baptized were many Sudras. They had been
clearly warned that admission into Christian fellowship
entailed the abandonment of caste prejudice ; this they
understood and accepted ; but when with them were baptized
a number of Malas, and they found that they were being
treated as one community with these despised people, their
former antipathy proved to be too strong for their faith,
and they fell away. Within a year they had taken up a
position in this matter which excluded them from the inner
fellowship of the Church, though they still professed a certain
amount of allegiance to it. This reversion had the effect of
defining very clearly the area within which the Church was
to gather its harvest. The Gospel was not of set purpose
proclaimed only to Malas. All were invited to the King's
feast, and doubtless it would have been possible to build up
a Church from among those belonging to the Sudra caste,

3i6 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

but it became clear that such a Church could not grow together
with one in which the Malas had any place or privilege. The
Missionaries, true to the spirit of their Master, went to the
lowliest of all, and while in some respects this made their
post-baptismal work the more difficult, it meant that the homo
geneity of the class in which they worked facilitated the
gathering in of ' the poor and maimed and blind and lame.'
The King's table was furnished with guests, and the Haidarabad
Mission became the Mission of a great compassion.

Burgess was soon confronted with the obstacle which has
thwarted the movement of the Church in other Districts,
and burdened the Missionary with a load of anxiety at a time
when his one thought should be the proclamation of the love
of God in Jesus Christ reaching and blessing the lowest of the
low. The initial expense of opening a new field of work is
always very great. A home has to be provided for the
Missionary and for every Indian Minister and Catechist.
Chapels have to be erected and school buildings set up. If
medical work is contemplated, the building and furnishing
of dispensaries and hospitals is a very heavy item of expendi
ture. Land has to be acquired for every one of these structures.
As the work progresses the indigenous agency increases, and
still further additions have to be made to ' Plant.' We have
seen how embarrassed the Home Committee was when demands
began to pour in upon it for the provision of such neces
sities in Ceylon and South India, and we have also seen how
Missionaries were in some part diverted from their true
objective in having to supplement an insufficient grant by
endeavouring to increase their ' local income.' It seemed for
a moment as though the newly launched Mission would split
upon the same rock that had wrecked the labours of their
brethren in other fields. A minute from the report of the
Committee held at Bishopsgate in February, 1881, shows
what was likely to be the attitude of the Administrative
Board in London.

The subject of a Medical Mission for women in Haidarabad was
introduced by the President of the Conference at the instance of the
Committee of the Women's Auxiliary. In the present state of the
Society's funds the Committee regret their inability to entertain the
proposal.

Obviously there was little hope of an adequate provision

317

for the buildings required in Secunderabad. Help came,
though in a quite unexpected way, and from an entirely
opposite quarter. A master-mariner will set his sails so that
the very violence of the storm will bring him the more speedily
to the haven where he would be. During the first year of
the Mission, Burgess had worked with feverish activity.
Services both on Sundays and week-days among the troops
in the Cantonment, diplomatic interviews with Government
officials, the founding of both a Tamil and a Telugu Church,
with endless negotiations to secure suitable sites for Mission
premises — these things, added to the inward drive towards
the villages which occupied both mind and heart, would have
broken down the health of any man. Burgess broke down,
and was peremptorily ordered by the doctors to return to
England if his life was to be preserved. But instead of
complying he obtained permission to visit Australia, and
there he gave himself up to preaching and lecturing on behalf
of his Mission. Within six months he returned to Haidarabad
with health restored and with gifts amounting to more than
seventeen hundred pounds with which to equip the Mission
with the necessary plant. That sum was the response of the
Methodist Church in Australia, itself the offspring ol Missionary
service, to an appeal for service which lay beyond its own
parochial boundaries. It was a generous response, and its
value for Burgess just at that time was far beyond the figure
mentioned. It gave him hope and confidence. He felt that
he had behind him the backing of a world-wide Church, and
he was assured that the hand of God was upon him for good.
Within two years chapels were built in Chadarghat, Secun
derabad, and Trimulgherry, while the purchase of a bungalow
secured what is still the Mission house in Secunderabad. In
1884 the Girls' Boarding and Normal School was erected, and
the base of the new Mission was thoroughly well established
and equipped. WTithin five years property to the value of
three thousand one hundred and twenty-four pounds had
been acquired, towards which the Committee had given less
than three hundred and fifty pounds.

This method of financing the Mission illustrates yet another
resource of the Missionaries in this District. They could not
wait for the official grant. Mr. Burgess, and in after years
even more markedly Mr. Posnett, appealed directly to the

318 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Methodist Church for financial aid. The response has always
been generous, and they have thus been able to finance their
Mission to an extent which would have been impossible if
they had been dependent upon grants made by the Committee
This method is open to criticism from the official point of
view, but in this case it has been abundantly justified by
results. The Methodist people have always responded to the
' special appeal/ and where they have faith in the Missionary
who appeals, and where they can follow their contribution
and note its effect in the service for which it was given, they
are ready to support generously the work which is presented
to mind and heart with both force and vividness. Nor is it
likely that such special gifts diminish the amount contributed
every year to the general funds of the Society. But it is
obvious that the Missionaries who succeed in this method
of financing their work secure thereby a great advantage
over those in other Districts who are wholly dependent upon
grants made from funds controlled by the Committee. This
system of private appeal was frankly adopted by the Mis
sionaries of this District. Thus we find the Rev. F. Lamb
saying1 :

It has been the only sure guarantee of reasonable progress. There
is much to be said against it. It irritates some good folk, and places
a crushing burden on men already overweighted with the cares of
their legitimate work. ... Its only justification lies in its necessity.
God's work must be carried on, and when ordinary resources fail others
must be opened up. Those who protest should remember that red-hot
appeals from the field touch hundreds who would never give to the
same extent through the ordinary channels. The Medak Circuit
represents a phase of missionary achievement that in its methods and
many-sided completeness is probably unique in South India. I
unhesitatingly affirm from an intimate knowledge of the facts that but
for the systematic crusade of publicity and appeal continued through
many years at the cost of infinite toil, the Medak of to-day would have
been an impossibility.

There is yet one more feature of the Haidarabad Mission
which accounts in large measure for its success. It was a
Mission of helpful and unlimited pity, of Christlike compas
sion. This is not to say that such features are lacking in
other fields, but from the first it was emphasized in this

1 Op. cit., p. 58.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 319

Mission partly by deliberate choice and partly by force of
circumstances. The medical work begun by Mrs. Pratt at
Karim Nagar was quickly followed and on a far more extensive
scale at Medak. Recurrent seasons of scarcity and famine,
or the invasions of widespread disease, gave the Missionaries
opportunities, eagerly embraced, of revealing in their service
the loving kindness of God ; and their ministry of healing
and of help, offered unstintingly and to the most neglected and
despised of the social classes, gave to their evangelistic efforts
a force which quickly reached the heart of the Malas, and
touched that heart to finest issues.

We must now turn from these general aspects of the
Haidarabad Mission to record the sequence of events. These
followed in such quick succession that the historian's task
of giving to each its due significance is no easy one. Mr.
Burgess had visualized from the first the essential factors of a
successful Mission. He set to work to give to each factor its
proper setting, and his impetuous spirit led him to establish
at once a complete organization which most men would have
been content to develop gradually. The energy with which
he carried through the programme he had conceived was
amazing. In 1884 the Rev. Dr. Butler, the founder of the
American Methodist Episcopal Mission in India, visited
Secunderabad, and in a letter from that city to a friend in
England he says :

I am tolerably well acquainted with what Missions can do in a given
time in heathen lands, and I feel that I ought to say to you that nowhere
have I seen any greater work accomplished for the time than that
which Mr. Burgess has been enabled to do here.

His first and simplest work was to arrange for meeting the
spiritual needs of Methodist soldiers in the Secunderabad
Cantonment. The number of ' declared Wesleyans ' in 1879
was a hundred and fifty. Morning and evening services were
held on the Sundays with other services during the week,
for the men and also for their wives. Burgess was fortunate
in securing the co-operation of a number of devout Christian
officers, among whom General A. H. E. Campbell became the
most intimate of friends. The official position of the latter
enabled him quietly, but most effectively, to further the
projects of the Missionaries, and his open alliance and association

320 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

in service with Mr. Burgess in every effort to help the
soldiers of the garrison brought blessing both to them and to
himself.

The Church of Scotland had for some years conducted a
Mission among the Tamils of Secunderabad, but in 1879 it
found itself unable to continue its operations and withdrew
the agency employed. Both Burgess and Wesley were fluent
speakers in Tamil, and the people thus left without a Pastor were
brought together and shepherded. That Tamil Church has
continued up to the present. In the Centenary year it returned
a full membership of a hundred and sixty.

In Chadarghat a Telugu Christian of the name of Cornelius
was discovered, and in 1879 his house was thrown open for
worship. Around the nucleus of this Christian family a
congregation of Telugu-speaking people quickly grew into a
Church, while in Secunderabad another Telugu Church came
into being. At the close of 1880 five services in three different
languages were being conducted every Sunday.

No small part of the work of the Haidarabad pioneers was
found in the establishing of satisfactory relations between
the Missionaries and the Government of the country. At
first the attitude of the latter, if not hostile, was scarcely
friendly. The Nizam's Government exercised rule over a
people who were notoriously turbulent, while not a few of them
were religious fanatics. If European Missionaries were allowed
to penetrate territories outside of the boundaries of the
Cantonment, to acquire land, and to preach a Gospel resented
by Moslems, it was evident that difficult situations might
easily arise, and the Government was most anxious to avoid
the possibility of this. Thus when in 1882 an application
was made to Government for land upon which to erect a
Mission house at Karim Nagar, a decided refusal was given
on the ground that the concession might lead to rioting. It
became necessary to remove all such anxieties from the mind
of the Government and to establish confidence in the character
and temper of the Missionaries. Tact, courtesy, and persistence
duly accomplished the task. The Missionaries came to be
trusted. Restrictions were removed. Reluctance gave way
to liberality, and the way to the villages was thrown open to
the heralds of the Cross. This concession might easily have
been made impossible, and the fullest credit must be given to

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 321

the founders of the Mission in securing freedom of access to
those who were in such desperate need of the uplifting power
of Christianity.

Towards the close of the year 1880, the Rev. Benjamin
Pratt was sent to join Mr. Burgess, and after a few years,
spent in ministering to the soldiers, Mr. and Mrs. Pratt found
themselves in April, 1884, at Karim Nagar. No better rein
forcement could have been sent out to the field. Mr. Pratt
brought to the Mission a spiritual tone and temper which
formed a perfect complement to the wisdom and energy of
William Burgess. We have already noted his ideal of securing
' a true fellowship with Hindus in their ways of thought and
modes of feeling.' He now set himself to secure this by accepting
conditions of service which were arduous and exacting, but which
speedily gave him that which he sought. In touring among the
villages he invariably travelled on foot, taking no servant with
him, and contenting himself with such food as he could obtain
from the villagers, while the house which he and his wife first
occupied was erected at a cost of forty pounds. It may be
that such conditions of life and work undermined his strength
and brought about the physical collapse which cut short his
career, but such service is not to be measured by years, and
in its course Pratt laid the foundations of the Mission in the
villages in lowliness of spirit and in tenderest pity for the
souls of men.

Karim Nagar, as the first ' out-station ' of the District, was
not chosen without great thought and circumspection.
Sironcha, the town on the River Godavery which Dr. Jenkins
had first recommended, was never occupied, though the names
of Benjamin Pratt and B. Wesley are entered in the Minutes
of the Society as being stationed there. Probably Dr. Jenkins
was influenced in selecting this town as the starting-point of
the Mission because it was possible to travel thither from Madras
by sea and river, but when Secunderabad became the head
quarters of the Mission, Sironcha was too far north to allow
of its being worked from Secunderabad. Other towns were
visited, but eventually Karim Nagar was chosen as being the
centre of a large village population, and the field proved to be
most fertile.

In 1885 the first converts were baptized in the village of
Gallipalli, and in 1887 there were baptisms in thirteen villages,

322 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

by which two hundred and seventy-four persons were admitted
into Church fellowship. The movement which now extends
over so wide an area had begun. Its course was rapid. In
1900 there were fifty-four congregations and more than two
thousand Christians in the Karim Nagar Circuit alone. In
1885 the District was visited by the Rev. Dr. Jenkins and the
visit was made memorable by two events. The Haidarabad
District was now put under a separate administration from
that of Madras, and the Revs. B. Wesley and G. K. Harding
were ordained to the work of the Ministry. Both men had
been sent from Madras to Haidarabad, and the District was
again fortunate in securing from the very first Indian Ministers
of both character and capacity. In common \\ith the other
Districts a considerable increase in the financial grant was
made in favour of this work, and a new recruit in the person
of the Rev. M. F. Crewdson had been sent out in 1884. The
prospects of rapid advance were most promising.

It must not be supposed that this work was being done
without opposition. On many occasions the preaching of the
Missionaries was interrupted, and more than once the Preachers
were locked up until an appeal to higher authority secured
their release. The persecution of converts was common,
and the most cruel methods of persuading them to recant were
adopted In one instance, recorded by Mr Pratt, a colporteur,
Mangiah by name, was cruelly beaten and his hands were
staked down to the ground in such a manner that he could
neither sit nor lie, but was obliged to spend the whole night on
his knees in great pain. But these persecutions did not avail
to check the movement into the Christian Church.

In 1886 the Rev. W. H. Soper was sent out and was followed
in 1890 by the Rev. C. 1 . Winters. New stations were opened
in Siddipett and Medak, but the return of Mr. Crewdson in
1889 led to several appointments being altered, and anything
like continuity of service in these two centres was impossible.
Mr. Soper was the first Missionary to reside in Medak, to which
Circuit he went in 1889, remaining there until 1896. In the
light of later accessions the number of converts in Medak
during Soper's ministry in that town seems small, but they
were far from being small in reality. Missionaries in Madras
and Mysore would have rejoiced with joy unspeakable if
within a couple of years after the opening of a new station

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 323

they could each year have admitted fifty or more persons into
the Church. After five years of difficult work Mr. Soper was
able to report a membership of two hundred and sixty-six,
distributed among sixteen villages. It had taken forty-seven
years of labour on the part of many Missionaries before that
membership had been reached in the Mysore State. Siddipett,
to which Mr. Winters was appointed in 1891, suffered from
frequent changes in the staff. Young Missionaries were sent
to this station while they acquired the use of the Telugu
language, there being no English work there. It was an
admirable school for the future prophets, but results similar
to those in Karim Nagar and Medak could not be expected
under such conditions. A few baptisms were reported, but
they were from among people of good caste, and they roused
so much bitter hostility as to deter others from confessing
Christ. At last, however, conversions began to occur in the
villages near, and by 1894 the number of Christians in the
Circuit had risen to two hundred and seventeen. Aler was
the next station to be occupied. This was done in 1891,
and its occupation was followed by that of Kundi in 1892!
More than fifty baptisms speedily took place in Kundi,
while in Aler there were two hundred and eight. These
Circuits were worked by the Rev. B. Wesley from Secun-
derabad. The total membership in the District in 1894 was
two thousand three hundred and eighty-six.

About this time much trouble arose between Missionaries
and subordinate officials of the State in connexion with street-
preaching. The attitude of the latter was due rather to anxiety
to keep the peace than to any bigotry or opposition to the
proclaiming of the Gospel. If an Englishman were to be
assaulted their responsibility to the supreme Government in
India would be very great, and as the larger towns were
inhabited by turbulent and often truculent people, a dis
turbance might easily arise, and in the heat of passion violence
might be used against the Preachers of a Gospel so subversive
of both custom and faith. There were such disturbances in
Chadarghat, in Karim Xagar, and in Siddipett during the
j-ear 1889. The matter came before the Prime Minister and
the British Resident, and much correspondence between
these and Mr. Burgess followed. It was conducted with
courtesy and goodwill on both sides. The Chairman was

324 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

willing to make every possible concession to the feeling of the
officers of State, but he was also anxious to maintain the right
of free speech, and he knew only too well that, while the atti
tude of the higher officials was perfectly reasonable, subor
dinate officers might take advantage of any restrictions
imposed in order to thwart and nullify all missionary operations.
The conclusion of the whole matter was the withdrawal of all
restrictions, and subordinate officers were notified that this
ruling was to be observed. But having established their
rights the Missionaries wisely refrained from using them,
and in the larger towns preaching in the open air was discon
tinued, and missionary propaganda took the form of personal
intercourse with individuals within the seclusion of private
dwellings. It is a moot question whether this form of
evangelistic appeal is not really more effective than addresses
delivered to an audience which is often hostile and more often
indifferent. At any rate this concession made to official
anxiety did not retard the growth of the Church. Accessions
continued and increased in number. At the close of the
'eighties it became evident that a large number of persons
were ready to be admitted into Church membership, and the
problem of educating and civilizing this mass of oppressed,
ignorant and degraded humanity became acute. The demand
for an extensive scheme of general education and for special
training of teachers and evangelists became urgent and
imperative.

The situation which immediately resulted was little short
of a missionary tragedy. The Methodists of England, in
common with Christians in all the Churches, had become
impatient of the slow progress of Christianity in India. In
the providence of God, Methodist Missionaries had at last
been directed to a field where an overflowing harvest might
be gathered in without delay. Many prayers from loving and
longing hearts were now being answered in the Haidarabad
Mission. The call now was for the Church to accept this
answer to those prayers, and to furnish the means required
for the building up into Christ of the increasing multitude
that had accepted Him as Master and Lord. A large increase
in Mission funds was clearly indicated. And it was precisely
at that moment that the ' Missionary Controversy ' threw
the whole Church into a spirit of criticism, distrust, and

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 325

bitterness. In the first year of that controversy, instead of
an increase in the exchequer of the Society the home income
dropped to the extent of nine thousand pounds. It seemed
as though the power of evil had chosen this method of bringing
to nought the victory of the Cross of Christ. Not* only was
any extension in the direction of training an agency to be
used in garnering the precious harvest made impossible, but
the educational work begun at Chadarghat was abandoned,
and, with thousands pressing to enter the Church, the grant
from the Home Committee for Native agency was for three
years without the slightest increase. In no part of the Indian
Mission field were the effects of that deplorable controversy
more disastrous than they were in the Haidarabad District.
As Mr. Lamb says,1 ' It put back for twenty years any pos
sibility of dealing worthily with the permanent necessities
of the work.'

An incident of 1885 must not be excluded from our record,
for it led to the formation of the Methodist Marathi Mission.
In the year mentioned the Rev. W. Burgess, in co-operation
with General Campbell, conducted a series of services on
behalf of the employees of the G.I.P. Railway Company at
Igatpuri, and among those who yielded themselves to Christ
was Mr. S. Rahator of Bombay. Of the work which he has
done and of the Mission which he has accomplished as a
Methodist Minister we shall write in another chapter.8

In October, 1892, Mr. Burgess felt that the burden of work
which he carried was beyond his strength, and he asked per
mission to return to England. Mrs. Burgess was then in
England visiting her children and her parents. The Committee
was naturally reluctant to lose the service of a Missionary
which had resulted in such extraordinary success. It was
suggested that he might remain at work a few years longer if
a young Missionary was sent out to assist him, and the Rev.
Joseph Edge Malkin was designated for that service. With
such relief in view Mr. Burgess consented to remain, and Mrs.
Burgess with one of her children and Mr. Malkin sailed in
October on the Roumania. The ship was cast ashore on
the coast of Portugal and all three of these precious lives
perished in the wreck. The catastrophe was one which words

op. cit., p. 38.
* See pp. 377 ff-

326 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

are inadequate to describe. To the already wearied Missionary
this blow on the heart seemed at one time likely to lead to
further disaster, but the grace of God and the love and
sympathy which gathered around him both in England and
in India upheld him. Of the loss to the Mission it is scarcely
easier to speak. The great gifts of personal charm, of intellect,
and of spiritual life with its resultant power, which charac
terized Mrs. Burgess were wholly devoted to the service of
Christ, and among the soldiers in Secunderabad, the women
in the zenanas of Haidarabad, and, not least, among the
lowly members of the Christian Church her gracious influence
was fully acknowledged. The feeling in England was expressed
in the resolution adopted by the Missionary Committee in
November, 1892 :

The Missionary Committee records its unspeakable grief at the tragic
death of Mrs. William Burgess of Haidarabad, her infant, and the Rev.
Joseph Edge Malkin, caused by the wreck of the S.S. Rownania off
the coast of Portugal on the night of October 2yth. In Mrs. Burgess
the Committee has lost a true Missionary — one of the brightest, most
talented, and most devoted workers in our Indian field ; whose con
secrated gifts did much to further the work of her husband, the Rev.
William Burgess, in the Nizam's territory, and whose blessed enthusiasm
kindled the flame of missionary zeal in many hearts. Among the
soldiers in Secunderabad Mrs. Burgess was reverenced and loved in a
remarkable degree, and she was made an instrument of good in the
Lord's hands to many of the Military stationed there from time to time.
Our departed friend was also an accomplished vernacular speaker, and
was instant in season and out of season in work for the temporal and
spiritual benefit of the people around her. Her loss to her husband is
beyond expression, and to the Committee is heavy and grievous in
the extreme.

The loss of Mr. Malkin was felt to be specially acute. He
had volunteered for Missionary service, and was a man of
exceptional promise. Reinforcements were at once sent out
to the stricken Mission, and in 1893 the Revs. J. C. K. Anstey
and F. Lamb joined the staff. With wonderful self-control
and devotion the bereaved Chairman remained at his post,
but in the nature of things it could not be for long. Early
in 1896 he returned to England after thirty years of service
in India. Few men have left behind them the record of
William Burgess, and his work was not yet ended. After
his return he began yet another service in Italy.1 He was

'See Vol. IV. pp. 511 ff.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 327

distinguished for his evangelistic zeal. While in charge of the
High School in Madras he sought earnestly to bring his students
to Christ. In Haidarabad both among British soldiers and
Hindus this evangelistic zeal was more immediately effective,
and hundreds were brought to a saving knowledge of Christ
through his ministry. He has the enviable record of having
founded a Mission which was successful from its commence
ment. In its history there has been no period of waiting,
no years of hope deferred. The harvest followed close upon
the sowing, and it has continued ever since. His restless
energy, tremendous drive, and tenacity of purpose told at
once in the field to which he was sent. His work was never
tentative or uncertain. He knew from the first what he
sought, and his indomitable spirit broke through every obstacle
in his way. He stands out from among the Missionaries of
the Society as a man who had a definite policy from the day
he arrived in Secunderabad, and nothing was allowed to stand
in the way of bringing that policy to full fruition. Mr.
Burgess is still with us, and though the years have robbed
him of his amazing physical powers, his spirit is as ardent and
as indomitable as ever. He has the joy of seeing the Mission
which he founded grow into a Church whose mere dimensions
are great, but whose spirit is greater still. He was followed
in the Chairmanship by the Rev. B. Pratt, and the Missionary
sent out to fill the vacancy in the staff was the Rev. C. W.
Posnett. With his coming a new era began in this District,
and in its course the Church grew and was multiplied manyfold.
Posnett resembled Burgess in one important particular.
He began his work with a definite policy fully formed in his
own mind. He is still on the field as we write, and we shall
not attempt to set forth in these pages a record which, we
trust, is yet far from its climax, but the historian may well
record the fact that the two men who in the providence of
God had so much to do with the formation and the develop
ment of this Mission came to their work with a carefully
thought-out scheme of service and with a definite purpose
fully formed in their own minds. To its fulfilment they bent
all their powers. The spirit of consecration hallowed every
scheme, and energy went with mental versatility to secure
that which should be for the glory of God. While still a student
at Richmond College Posnett took a course of medical training

328 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

in a London hospital. It was not enough to give him a
diploma, but it enabled him to give relief to those who suffered
from minor ailments, and in a measure to make manifest the
heart of compassion which became his greatest appeal to
suffering humanity. During that time his sister was also
taking a course of medical training in Glasgow, and in the
course of the year which he spent in acquiring the use of
Telugu, Posnett made arrangements for her and her friend
Miss Harris to join him in Medak. By the close of that year
all three were in Medak, and medical work was the main
plank in the missionary ' platform.' It was well chosen, for
in Medak, as at first in Galilee, it was the means of revealing
the heart that is touched with the feeling of human infirmity.
The ministry of healing awakened love, for nothing but love
was its motive, and with the awakened love went trust. Then
these great spiritual powers were directed to Jesus Christ
as their true objective until thousands began to cry ' Victory
to Jesus.'

When these three young and inexperienced Missionaries
found themselves in Medak they were at once confronted with
an appalling calamity. During the years 1896-1900 there
occurred two periods of famine. The Haidarabad State was
on the fringe of the area most affected, and nothing indicates
the spirit and the capacity of the ' dauntless three ' than the
way in which they grappled with a difficulty which would
have taxed the powers of those who had the wealth and
authority of the State at their command. They themselves
were inadequately housed, but their accommodation was still
further restricted to make room for those whom the Brahmans
called ' the untouchables.' When in the wake of famine
there followed its dread concomitant cholera, the personal
peril of the Missionaries must have been very great, for they
kept nothing back in their service, and death was every day
within their guard. In the mercy of God it forbore to strike,
and when the three years were over they emerged from the
dust and grime of their fight crowned with the love of those
to whom they had given themselves. That laurel was
promptly laid at the feet of their Lord. The Mala, covered
with dirt and foul with disease, looked with bewildered eyes
at these three young foreigners who never hesitated to touch
the untouchables, and to care with the utmost tenderness for

329

' the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things.' He
vaguely speculated as to the motive which could thus prompt
' the Sahib Log ' to such humble service, and gradually it
dawned upon the slow mind that ' their God did like this, and
they do it to please Him.' It was a great conclusion : the
seed of Christian life was enfolded therein.

It is a temptation to a historian to enrich and enliven his
pages with details of this service, details which were dramatic
and humorous or pathetic and tender. But the muse of
history is by tradition ' severe/ and it is certain that the
writer could scarcely hope for forgiveness from those who were
his colleagues and are still his friends, if he were to draw upon
his intimacy with them for the more personal records of their
service. Let it suffice to say that ' their work was not in
vain in the Lord.' The hearts of the Malas were melted in
the flame of this love and were ready to receive the impress
of Christ. In 1900, when the worst of the twofold scourge of
famine and pestilence was over, the number of persons in full
communion with the Christian Church was five hundred and
twenty-nine with nearly eight hundred on trial for membership.
But this numerical increase gives only a faint idea of the work
that had been done. Even the non-Christian population
became friends instead of enemies, and petitioned the supreme
Government of the State to make a free gift of land to the
Missionaries that they might erect a hospital upon it.

During those years of famine the preservation of the lives
of the Christian people brought a world of anxieties upon all
the Missionaries in this area. In most of the Circuits relief
was given out of funds subscribed in England, but the greatest
care was required to prevent the pauperization of the Church.
This peril was avoided in all the Circuits. If we refer especially
to Medak it is because of the scale on which relief was given
in that centre, and because of the foresight which turned a
calamity into the means of providing for the increased efficiency
of missionary operations. Posnett was determined to forestall
the difficulties which even then were beginning to cramp his
efforts, and which had strangled mission work in other
Districts. They were those which arose from insufficient
buildings, and we have indicated their evil effects in other
chapters. He had already mapped out a building scheme
for Medak. Like most of his projects, it was bold and

330 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

extensive. Faith and foresight prompted him to build for the
Church of the future, but we may imagine that he must have
had many misgivings as to how the necessary funds were to be
found. He had a hungry multitude to feed, and in feeding
them to teach them the important lesson of self-respect.
With amazing promptness he set his crowd of starving folk
to work. In return for that work he gave them food, and
kept them under Christian instruction and care. In due
time there arose in Medak a Girls' Boarding School and an
enlargement of the one already provided for boys ; a hostel
for the accommodation of Christians coming from distant
villages ; a theological hall with class-rooms ; a row of houses
for married students of the theological class, and another for
those who were unmarried ; an enlarged mission house and a
residence for lady workers, while a splendidly constructed
well provided pure water for the whole community. That so
comprehensive a scheme should have been conceived and
carried out by a Missionary scarcely out of his ' probation '
reveals an organizing capacity far beyond the ordinary. At
the close of the famine the Missionaries throughout the
District were able to record that they did not know of a single
Christian within the borders of their respective Circuits who
had perished from hunger. It was a triumph of Christian
philanthropy. Within the Church the effect was even more
remarkable. Both boarding schools at Medak were filled with
boys and girls who had been brought fresh from their Pariah
homes, and the difficulty of teaching them anything at all was
very great. We need to visualize these poor waifs, barely
rescued from starvation and far removed in their former habit
of life from the world of letters, to judge of the difficulty of
teaching them even the simplest of the Gospel stories. The
first efforts resulted in failure, but the fertile mind of Posnett
was equal to the occasion. He devised a method which at
first received a full measure of adverse criticism from those
who feared that it would result in reducing the words and deeds
of our Lord to irreverent use. But the fears of such persons
were soon removed, and though as the children became
accustomed to the use of books the method gave way to more
ordinary study of the Scriptures, as a first expedient it gave
to the children such a knowledge of the Gospels as could not
have been given in any other way. Briefly the method

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 331

consisted in dramatizing the life of our Lord. But the method
was so unique and so important for persons in the intellectual
condition of these children that we shall at this point adopt
the description given by Mr. Lamb, who had the advantage
of witnessing some of the scenes, and of observing their effect.

Then Mr. Posnett bethought himself of the mediaeval miracle plays
and of the passion play atOberammergau. Here was a method that
might succeed, and it was at once put into practice. The effect was
instantaneous. We were led to the alternative of acting the story,
and so week by week morning prayers became the most exciting part
of the day. Paralytics were let down from the roof, the hungry were
filled, the dumb shouted, and the lame danced, the pigs of Gadara were
drowned, and the cries of the man who lived among the tombs were
stopped. Each story was carefully prepared and performed with the
greatest reality, and ere they knew it the shy backward women and
servants were all unconsciously taking part. The result was indubitable,
if the method led to some searchings of heart. These were entirely
superfluous, for none of the objections which could be freely raised in
England applied to these children of tender and mature age, who not
only took the keenest delight in the acting, but learned — never to
forget — the most fascinating stories the Bible contains. The chance
of irreverence was carefully guarded and so beautifully respected by
these children of reverent and worship-loving India — the sacred
character never being acted, but His words alone being repeated in the
third person — that we are convinced that the effort to be reverent
under difficulties has produced a nobler reverence than all the blind
and worthless formalities which are too often reckoned of great price.1

The life of Jesus became real to these Mala children, and
one might wish that the same happy result could be obtained
among more highly favoured children in other lands.

Of even greater importance was the training of evangelists,
but of this we have written in another chapter.

That the help given to starving and friendless outcastes was
followed by a great influx of people to enter the Christian
fellowship is not surprising. In the year 1900, two thousand
one hundred and twenty-five persons were received into the
Church. More than half of these were in Medak alone, and
Mr. Posnett, for good and sufficient reasons, refused admission
to two thousand others whom a less careful Missionary might
have admitted. The reason for his refusal — and the Church
at home may well take note of it — was that he did not see
his way to provide for the pastoral oversight of them. In

1 op. cit., p. 79.

332 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

other Circuits of the District, too, large numbers might have
been admitted into the Church, had it not been felt that there
was need of caution in making admissions en bloc, and that
to receive crowds of persons, for whose instruction and
' edifying ' there was no prospect of adequate provision, was
a course which was bound to issue in disappointment and even
disaster.

General principles with reference to missionary service in
times of famine have been laid down by Mr. Lamb as having
been established by the experience of the Missionaries during
this period. These are :

1. Relief should be extended to non-Christians as well as
to the members of the Church.

2. At such times the Mission staff should be reinforced at
all costs, so that regular spiritual teaching may be given in
the famine camps.

3. When the famine has come to an end all thoroughly
instructed inquirers who may be willing to enter the Christian
Church should be received.

During the Chairmanship of the Rev. B. Pratt several
Missionaries were sent to join the Haidarabad Mission. Most
of these returned to England after brief spells of service, but
F. C. Sackett (1901) and H. Guard Price (1903) were still on
the field in 1923. The administration of the Rev. B. Pratt
was marked by the self-suppression and the quiet strength
whose secret is a consecrated life. As a leader of men he
excelled by reason of his readiness to allow his colleagues the
utmost freedom in working out their individual schemes of
service. He had faith in their sense of vocation, and his trust
was not betrayed. Behind the quietness of his demeanour
there was a strength and a clearness of vision which his brethren
understood, and upon which they relied in time of difficulty,
while his freedom from self-assertion won for him the unfeigned
affection of all with whom he had to do. In the rapid develop
ment of missionary enterprise, and in the rush of hundreds
to enter the Church, he stood for the principle of consolidation,
and under the circumstances of the time this was a most
necessary contribution.

One of the most important extensions of the Mission during
his chairmanship was the occupation of Indur (the name was
afterwards changed to that of ' Nizamabad ' ) in 1898. This

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 333

extension was remarkable as being prompted by an invitation
from the native officials of the place, whereas in other cases
the Missionary had to seek permission to enter. The town was
an important one, situated upon a new line of the railway
and opening up a large area for the Christian Missionary. The
Taluqdar offered to forward an application for land with his
endorsement in favour of a grant to the Mission, and Pratt was
thus able to obtain a site of four acres for mission premises.
In 1899 Mr. Anstey was appointed to the new Circuit, and
converts began to be gathered in at once. While in Siddipett
Anstey had made a beginning in the direction of industrial
work, and he took with him to Nizamabad the lads he had
begun to train in the hope of making Nizamabad a great
industrial centre. But in the following year cholera broke out,
and Mrs. Anstey after a few hours of suffering was taken from
the work into which she had thrown herself with the eagerness
and enthusiasm of her nature. Anstey was obliged to take
his motherless children to England, and the industrial school
passed into the charge of the Rev. F. Lamb. The famine had
left the boarding schools all through the District crowded with
children, and boys were drafted from these to be trained as
artisans. But after some years of careful training it was found
that boys from the villages, where agriculture had been the hered
itary occupation, did not as a class show a sufficient aptitude
for anything better than carpentry, and that of no great
excellence. The better workmen were found among boys
who had come from the towns, and these after being trained
went as a rule to Bombay where they could command better
wages. The School was not self-supporting, and no grant-m
aid seemed likely to come either from the London Committee
or from the local Government. It was therefore decided to
complete the training of the boys already in the School, but
to make no further admissions, so that in course of time the
School came to an end. It was also hoped to establish at
Nizamabad a hospital for women, and this was greatly furthered
by donations contributed by non-Christians. Medical work
began with the appointment of Miss Meakin in 1902 when the
hospital was opened by Mrs. Wiseman during her visit to the
District. In Nizamabad the ' community movement ' was
delayed, for in this Circuit there was a greater admixture of
castes, and the converts already enrolled seemed to lack the

334 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

family influence through which in other centres so many had
been brought into the Christian fellowship. The Circuit
covered an area containing a population of seven hundred
thousand, of which perhaps one hundred thousand were of the
class from which in other Circuits the majority of converts
had come. These were scattered among nine hundred villages,
and the solitary Missionary, with three evangelists, found it
no easy task to evangelize the scattered folk. The situation,
says Mr. Lamb, was comparable to what would be found in
England if one Minister and three Local Preachers were
appointed to evangelize the whole of Lincolnshire.

Siddipett is a Circuit which was first occupied in 1886, and
the Circuit is of special interest inasmuch as it was the sphere
of service in which the Rev. B. Wesley was entrusted with the
full powers of Superintendent. We have already spoken of
this Minister as the trusted colleague of Mr. Burgess when the
Mission was begun. The years that followed had proved him
to be a Minister of great ability. His counsel in the Synods
carried weight, and his loyalty was never in question. In
1897, when Mr. Soper returned to England for furlough, Mr.
Wesley was entrusted with the administration of Siddipett.
The appointment proved to be satisfactory in every way, and
Mr. Wesley remained in this Circuit for twenty years. The
membership, which stood at seventy-one in 1907, increased
year by year, until it was close upon four hundred, and the
respect and affection felt for him was indicated by his election
to be one of the delegates from India attending the celebration
of the Centenary in England, where he became known to the
Methodist Church in this country. An even greater honour
was shown him when in 1914 he was elected Chairman of the
South India Provincial Synod, presiding over both European
and Indian colleagues with dignity and efficiency. His
career shows what the Church may expect to find in the Indian
Ministry. His name will always be associated with the system
of ' village Elders ' which he instituted first at Siddipett. The
most influential men in each village were appointed to be
' peddalu ' or elders, and they were entitled to wear a silver
ring with their names inscribed upon it as a symbol of their
office. They presided over village councils, and settled any
quarrel which might arise. They collected contributions of
grain, and arranged for such service as the cleaning of the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 335

chapels. Such a system was in keeping with former custom
and tradition, and the people readily accepted such authority
as was conferred upon the elders, while responsibility developed
powers of administration which augured well for the time
coming when Churches will be independent of missionary
direction and control. What is most interesting in this
scheme is its distinctly Oriental character. It showed that
the Church was developing on lines which were not a slavish
reproduction of Western methods, but were indigenous to the
country. The system proved to be of so much value in Siddi-
pett that it was introduced in other Circuits with excellent
results. It was certain to produce in time a responsible laity
in the Church. That very desirable element had not yet
appeared. In 1897 it was reported that there was no layman
who could with advantage be admitted as a member of the
Synod. In that same year Mr. Pratt was obliged to call the
attention of the Home Committee to the serious position in
which the Church found itself for want of a sufficient Staff.
In some Circuits the majority of the members had been newly
admitted, and the Missionaries were ' confronted with grave
and perilous problems that call for immediate and persistent
oversight. We are filled with alarm at the calamity which is
certain to follow.' In Karim Nagar at that time there were
thirty-five villages containing Christian communities and
lacking the guidance of even a Catechist. The Chairman
asked for two additional Indian Ministers and a substantial
increase in the grant for Native agency. Failing this, he
declared that it would be necessary to abandon evangelistic
work and to concentrate on the duties of the pastorate. In
dividual Missionaries turned in their despair to making direct
appeals through their friends in England. But this drew a
remonstrance from the Secretaries of the Society, who pointed
out that such appeals could not be indefinitely multiplied.
They depended for success upon personal acquaintances,
and many Missionaries, borne down by the demands of their
work, had no personal access to friends who were both wealthy
and well-disposed. Doubtless the true relief lay in an increase
of contributions to the general fund of the Society, but those
were the days of the missionary controversy, and instead of
increase there was decrease.

The Missionaries were, however, cheered by revivals of

336 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

spiritual life in the Churches, and one of these is well described
by Mr. Lamb. It began in a convention held at Medak in
connection with the opening of the Training Institution.

It was a heart-melting break-down. In the inquiry -room Superin
tendents knelt with men with whom they had worked for years, and
with boys whom they had baptized in infancy, and the general
experience was that both in emotion and downright intelligent convic
tion the majority of cases were parallel to similar acts of consecration
at home. Nor could any one who saw the new light in their eyes and
felt the grateful hand-grip of those who had found peace and joy, doubt
for one moment the genuineness of what had taken place.

A striking incident of the year 1899 t°°k place in connexion
with the secretarial visit of the Rev. Marshall Hartley. The
season for travelling in India was nearly over by the time he
arrived at Secunderabad, and the Secretary was finding the
heat as much as he could endure. It was not possible for him
to visit all the Circuits or to spend much time among the
villages, in which there were that year nineteen thousand
inquirers seeking baptism, few of whom the Missionaries dared
to baptize. But as he could not go to the people they came
to him, and a great camp-meeting was organized at Gallipalli,
a village midway between the Circuits of Karim Nagar, Siddi-
pett, and Medak. What this meant to the Medak contingent
may be inferred from the fact that they had travelled for six
consecutive nights to reach Gallipalli, and would spend six
more on their way back. A whole day was given up to religious
exercises, of which prayer and singing and exhortations were
the chief feature, and at the close of the day the crowd of
Christian people numbering many hundreds, broke into one
great shout of ' Victory to Jesus.' Then they returned to their
several Circuits. They had seen the great Delegate of the
Church who had come across the sea to visit them, and they
had received his blessing, but most of all they had attained
to ' Church-consciousness.' They had realized that they were
no longer scattered units of a people despised by all men, but
that they were members of a great fellowship which belonged
to East and West, and that love had broken every barrier
down. Well might they cry ' Victory to Jesus.'

In the local Report for the year 1901, the method of
evangelization followed in this District is likened to the work
of a miner. It is not the strategy of a great general, nor the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 337

slowly working influence of leaven permeating the surrounding
life. It is rather that of one who places a great disruptive
power in the lowest strata of the human society, and waits
for the moment when his ' dynamite ' will rend the superincum
bent mass. The figure is striking and suggestive, and we shall
not quarrel with it, but even in the very report in which it
appears the writer goes on to say :

We are none the less mournfully conscious that our organization
is little qualified to leaven and prepare the minds of the higher classes
to profit by the great disruptive forces that are being stored in silence
and darkness under their feet. Opportunity and means for a desirable
extension of our range of operations may be afforded in days to come.

Presently the rate of increase in the Church began to diminish.
This was not because the people were more reluctant to join
the Christian Church, or the Missionaries less willing to admit
them, but because the workers were completely absorbed by
pastoral duties in the already existing Church, and though
Posnett was steadily and successfully pressing forward the
work in the Training Institution, the supply of pastors could
not overtake the demand, and Posnett himself was feeling
the need of trained assistants in his work of training. As late
as 1907 it was pointed out that

Medak has in view the pastorate of the villages, but the -wider
pastorate which can be filled only by the Indian Minister has numerically
fallen far below what is absolutely necessary to the administration of
the Church to-day, and no provision is being made for the future.
Three Circuits are without any Indian Minister at all, and the others
are seriously undermanned. The problem of raising an indigenous
ministry in Haidarabad is beset with special difficulty, because the
low state of education in general makes it impossible to find men who
are educationally on a level with the average Indian Minister ; yet
the demand is growing for an even higher average. The men are
wanted now. Again there is the material, but it is in the rough, and
will take longer to shape for this purpose than for the purpose con
templated by the Medak Institution.

Another imperative need of the Church was to be found in a
supply of Christian literature. There were then ten thousand
Christians in the District, and the means of their instruction,
so far as literature was concerned, could scarcely be said to
exist at all. The absorption of the Missionaries in village
evangelization had left them without the leisure or the oppor
tunity for its production In these two most important

338 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

particulars, the District was suffering from ' the defect of its
qualities/ As an evangelizing agency it had been supremely
successful, but its very success had prevented its making
adequate provision for the Church which was coming into being.
On the Mission field more than anywhere else it is necessary
to take long views in arranging the work of the Church. The
anxiety of the Missionaries at this time was very great. In
1909 this defect in their organization was in a fair way to be
removed. Through the generosity of two English Methodists,
a press was set up in Medak, and it is significant that the
first works published in Telugu were an edition of the Prayer
Book, and a manual of midwifery for the use of Indian nurses.
So true was the Mission to the two centres of all its activity —
communion with God and the relief of human suffering.

In 1906 the Rev. B. Pratt returned from furlough to resume
his work as Chairman of the District. For twelve j^ears he
had carried a very heavy burden, \\~hile during that time
the Church had increased numerically, its very success had
raised — as we have just indicated — great problems of adminis
tration, and his mind was over-weighted with care. On Easter
Sunday, in the following year, he was stricken down with
cerebral thrombosis. The channels of life which fed the tired
brain could no longer convey their food. A visit to the hills
gave only a partial relief, and he was compelled to return to
England. With extraordinary courage and tenacity he
returned in 1910, thinking that, although he could no longer
carry the burden of administration, as a Supernumerary he
might still be of some service in the field he loved, but after
another year he finalty withdrew. It would be hard to
exaggerate in characterizing the service he had rendered.
It was wise, it was strong, it was immeasurably fruitful. It
was shot through and through with the tenderness of love,
and bore upon its face the infinite charm which goes with
modesty and self-obliteration. He is crowned with the honour
of his brethren, and with the love of those for whose salvation
he had toiled.

Mr. Pratt was succeeded as Chairman by the Rev. Frederick
Lamb l who administered the District until 1915, when he re
turned to England and took up work in the Home Circuits. It

1 At the very moment in which these words are being written, the news comes
of the sudden passing of Mr. Lamb.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 339

will be of advantage to the reader to record here the numerical
statistics of the Mission at this time ; and in studying them it
must be borne in mind that in 1877 the Methodist Church in
this District did not exist at all.

Statistics in 1907.

Chapels and other Places for Preaching . . . . 86

European Missionaries . . . . . . . . 12

Indian Ministers . . . . . . . . . . 5

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . 12

Local Preachers . . . . . . . . . . 10

Full Members . . . . . . . . . . 2,175

Members on Trial . . . . . . . . .... 4,106

Christian Community . . . . . . . . 9,996

Scholars in Schools . . . . . . . . 3,418

The chairmanship of the Rev. F. Lamb was marked by a
steady attempt to strengthen the position already reached,
and to consolidate the work in the different centres. The
sound judgement and the perseverance which had been the
great characteristics of Mr. Lamb all through his ministry,
stood the District in good stead, as he set himself to build up
the Church that had so suddenly sprung into being. But the
tide that was now in full flow towards the Church continued
to run, and though the prominent note of this period was
organization, and the provision of Native agency, the member
ship of the Church continued to increase. Six years after he
entered upon his duties as Chairman it had risen to three
thousand six hundred, an increase of fifteen hundred in the
six years, while there was an increase of more than three
thousand in the number of those on probation. Two new
Circuits, Jagtial and Ellareddipet, showed a membership of a
hundred and sixty-seven, and a hundred and twenty respec
tively, while all the older Circuits also showed large increases.
Aler especially, a station which had been worked from Secunder-
abad and Siddipett, and which had, for want of a resident
Missionary, been slower to develop, doubled its membership
within the six years, and now showed a total surpassed only
by Medak and Karim Nagar. To meet the pastoral duties
entailed by this growth of the Church there were two additional
Indian Ministers and fifty-eight additional Catechists. The

340 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

number of Indian Ministers was actually less than it had been
ten years previously when the membership of the Church was
not half what it was in 1913. This unsatisfactory position
is easily explained. In the earlier days of the Mission, Indian
Ministers had been sought and found in the Madras District ;
but as village work in Tiruvallur and other Circuits developed,
the Madras District was unable to spare more of its trained
agents for Haidarabad, and meantime there had been no
systematic effort made to create an Indian Ministry from
among the Mala converts. Indeed, it is doubtful whether
the material available during the time of the earlier accessions
could have been shaped to such use. In 1909 a Divinity School
was begun in Chadarghat, the Rev. J. C. Knight Anstey being
appointed Principal. But his difficulties were very great.
No candidates with a knowledge of English were forthcoming,
and suitable text-books in Telugu did not exist. An elaborate
curriculum had been drawn up by the Synod, but it implied a
knowledge of English by the students. Mr. Anstey's admirable
facility in the use of Telugu enabled him in some measure to
overcome the difficulty arising, but he must have found it an
arduous undertaking and it was soon abandoned. In 1912
there were only two students in the Divinity School, one of
whom died during the year, and the other was sent into circuit
work. Under such circumstances it was decided to bring four
of the most promising men from the Evangelists' Training
Institution in Medak who had already been tested in village
work, and to give them an additional course at Chadarghat
in the hope that they would be found to be fit and proper
persons to be admitted into the ranks of the ordained Ministry.
Perhaps the greatest event of the period now under review
was the admission of the Madigas into the Christian fellowship.
Hitherto nearly all the converts had come from the Mala
section of the Panchamas, and they had come in such numbers
that the Missionaries had neither time nor strength to spend in
work among other classes of the population. Their concentra
tion upon the Malas gave them two great advantages. The
Christian faith was passed on from family to family of those
who were already united by caste. Social homogeneity lent
itself admirably to the furtherance of the Gospel. But in
addition to this the Missionaries had practically escaped the
difficulties that had so often threatened to destroy the work of

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 341

their brethren in Negapatam. Caste prejudices did not arise
to vex their souls, for their work lay within the limits of a
single social group. They knew, however, that this advantage
would one day come to an end. They were not likely to limit
the proclamation of the Gospel to a single section of the com
munity, however extensive that section might be.

Now the Malas formed only one of two or more groups of the
Panchamas ; there was another section, that of the Madigas,
and the higher castes regarded both with equal contempt.
Both were compelled to find their dwellings outside of the
village proper, and both inhabited hovels in which an English
man would not be allowed to house his swine, if he were at all
likely to wish to do so . Yet nothing so illustrates the hold which
caste has obtained upon the whole Indian community as the
fact that these outcastes themselves were as rigorous in its
observance as any Brahman. The Malas had no dealings with
the Madigas. They dealt out to them the same contempt that
they received from the Brahmans. The two classes observed
a mutual exclusion of the most rigid character, both in the
partaking of food and in the ordinance of marriage. How the
distinction between these two classes first arose it is difficult to
say. The probability is that it was due to the fact that the
Madigas are the tanners of India, while the Malas are agricul
tural labourers, and to all Hindus leather is an abomination ;
its touch is defilement, and only stern necessity allows its use
in the form of shoes. The Madigas were also accustomed to
eat the flesh of animals that had died a natural death, and this
use of what we call ' carrion ' may have been the original or
a secondary cause of estrangement. But whatever the cause
may be, the gulf between the two classes was held to be impass
able. When, as was occasionally the case, a Madiga entered
the Church his presence invariably created a difficulty, and
when presently the number of conversions from this class began
to increase the Missionaries were confronted with the same
problem that had vexed the mind and the heart of many a
Missionary further south.

In 1903 the Rev. H. Guard Price, whom we have already met
in the Negapatam District, joined the Haidarabad Staff and
was appointed to Kundi. When certain Madigas came to him
asking to be baptized he at once received them into Church
fellowship. This was the signal for an outburst of indignation ;

342 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

not, be it observed, among the Mala Christians, but among
their heathen relatives, who feared that the Christians of their
own social group would be contaminated by intercourse with
Madigas, and would be in consequence still further separated
from them than they were already. Presently difficulties
arose in boarding schools when Madiga children were admitted,
and the partaking of the Lord's Supper by Christians of these
two classes threatened in some places to divide the Church and
to break up the Christian fellowship. The difficulty was one
in the solving of which the reality of spiritual life among the
Malas was to be severely tested. Of this side of the new life
which had been given to the Malas we have said but little. It
was now to be put to the proof. It curiously reproduced the
situation which the great Apostle to the Gentiles has so vividly
depicted in the Epistle to the Galatians. With freedom
Christ had made them free. Were they now to be entangled
again in a yoke of bondage ? If they had been led of the Spirit
they were no longer under the law. The faith which worketh by
love had made them ' one new man ' in Christ Jesus, and in
Him all were one. Was their experience of Christ sufficiently
real to enable them to see that in Him all social distinctions
which prevented the fullness of communion were done away ?
Had the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts destroyed the
seeds of pride and prejudice ? These last were not of yesterday.
They formed an inherited social attitude which ran back in the
life of their fathers for many centuries. The question now
forced upon them was as severe a test of their new life as could
be applied, and their spiritual guides and teachers anxiously
awaited the answer of the Church.

It was a happy coincidence that the question first became
acute at Kundi, and at a time when Mr. Guard Price was the
Superintendent of the Circuit. The latter had studied the
same question in Negapatam, and his experience in that
District enabled him to act without hesitation where another
Missionary might have hesitated in view of a probable rending
of the Church. It was fortunate, too, that the question should
be answered first in Kundi ; for here the boundary line be
tween Mala and Madiga was not so sharply drawn as elsewhere.
Some measure of intercourse already existed, and it was so
much the easier for both classes to enter the Christian brother
hood. The Kundi Circuit had been one of those in which the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 343

' community movement ' had been comparatively slow. In
consequence of this, whenever sickness or furlough entailed
a diminution of the Staff the Circuit was left without a resident
Missionary. It was given to Mr. Guard Price to make Kundi
a centre of absorbing interest as the point at which the Christian
Church was challenged in the matter of its attitude to caste.
Price was followed by the Rev. E. T. Leslie, and his catholic
outlook and cautious methods greatly contributed towards
bringing the Madiga movement on to lines along which it
might be left to continue.

On the whole the Missionaries had reason to rejoice over the
spirit in which the Church passed through its test. They were
fortunate again in that the question had become acute only
after a period in which the Christian law of love had had time
to establish itself in the hearts of the people. Though some
were ' offended ' and walked no more with those who associated
freely with Madigas, yet from the first it was evident that the
second generation of Malas would recognize a Christian fellow
ship in which even the Madigas had their place. It was of
great significance and promise that the first Madiga inquirers
were brought to Mr. Price by a Mala Catechist. A reasonable
attitude was that of those who asked for time to adjust their
lives to conditions so subversive of an immemorial tradition,
and those who have studied ' caste ' in India will be the last
to blame them for this. Some few concessions to the common
feeling were made such as the use of different cups in the
celebration of the Lord's Supper, but these might safely be
trusted to disappear as the uplifting power of Christianity
made itself felt among the Madigas as it had done among the
Malas.

An incident which occurred after the Centenary year may
be inserted in our record as showing that this forecast is correct,
and that the Christian spirit will ultimately triumph over
the traditional exclusiveness. In the year 1919 forty Christian
children of Madiga families were admitted into the Boarding
School at Karim Nagar, but found themselves isolated there
since the Mala children refused to associate with them.
Presently exclusion from the fellowship of school life was
followed by little deeds of deliberate unkindness, and then by
actual persecutions which were cruel. Once again we would
call the attention of the reader to the persistency of caste

344 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

feeling in India. Here were children who were separated for
the time from the atmosphere of their own homes and the talk
of their elders. They had been brought up in accordance
with the Christian rule of life, and yet when Madiga children
were brought into their common life they reproduced the
feeling of contempt and antagonism which prevailed among
their heathen forefathers. The sequel however, was entirely
satisfactory.

When the evangelists came in to the Agents' meeting, Mr. Lant
placed one of the Madiga children on a table and got her to tell the
story of her sufferings at the hands of her schoolmates. The evangelists
were so grieved and incensed that the last vestige of hostility to the
lower caste as fellow-believers in Christ disappeared. Of their own
accord they called a group of their number who were Madigas by birth
and sought their assistance in cooking a meal. Then the whole com
pany — teachers, children, Christian officials in the town and the
European Missionaries — sat down together to partake of it. A fine
feeling of brotherhood laid hold of them, and from that day there has
been complete harmony.

That feast was in a very real sense ' a Holy Communion,' and
who can doubt but that He who washed the feet of His disciples
and then said, ' This commandment I give unto you, that ye
love one another even as I have loved you/ was present at
the feast ?

This coming in of the Madigas opened an amazing vista to
the eyes of the Missionaries in this field. The Madiga com
munity was but little smaller than that of the Malas, and if
the movement became general throughout the area the Christian
community in the Haidarabad State would assume dimensions
which would be both the joy and the proving of the Methodist
Church. It should be the signal, not for the remission of
effort, but rather for its extension, especially in the direction
of training and pastoral work. It will be at the peril of her
own life that the Church neglects this manifest duty. Several
hundreds of the Madigas had been admitted into the Church
by the time the centenary year came round, and according
to the last report which we have seen, there are six thousand
Madiga members of the Church. The ' Open Door ' is clearly
before the Methodist Church. Will that Church enter it in
the plenitude of her power ?

The Nizamabad Circuit is one of those with a distinctive

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 345

future before it. We have referred before to this Circuit, and
to the abortive attempt to make it the centre of an industrial
Mission. The School was given up, but a still nobler ' industry '
took its place, and Nizamabad will long be associated with the
ministry of healing for the leper — a ministry in which the
Church comes nearest to that of its Lord. In 1910 the Wood
Memorial Hospital was opened, and a Hindu gentleman, who
made no profession of Christianity, contributed generously
towards its furnishing. In the following year the same gentle
man again came forward and offered the equivalent of nearly
six hundred pounds if the Missionaries would found a Home for
Lepers. The leper is always the object of compassion, but
in the Haidarabad State he was a distinct menace to the well-
being of the community, inasmuch as no attempt was made
by the Government to isolate those who were afflicted with the
disease, or to bring into their pitiful lives any sort of ameliorat
ing conditions. The disease was everywhere prevalent, but
especially so in the area covered by the Nizamabad Circuit.
In the autumn of 1907 the Rev. G. M. Kerr was sent out to this
District, and in the following year he was appointed to this
Circuit. Mrs. Kerr held a medical diploma, and she at once
threw herself into the work of healing the sick. Some few
miles away was the village of Dichpalli, in which a dis
pensary had been opened, and here the ' Nastin treatment '
for leprosy was being tried. Its application brought about
so much improvement in the physical condition of those who
were suffering from this disease that a sudden flash of hope
broke into the darkened life of the leper. Villagers came many
miles to be treated, and to seek admission into the home which
it was decided to build in this village. Presently with the
help of ' The Leper Mission ' and with grants of land from the
Nizam's Government a little ' colony ' of lepers was settled
on a site of seventy acres. A small Mission house was built
and blocks of small houses were erected for the use of the sick.
Here Mr. and Mrs. Kerr with Sister Adela Moss gave themselves
up to the work of healing those from whom all hope of health
had seemed to be taken away. In 1920 there were a hundred
and sixty inmates of the Home, and as we write the news comes
of that number having risen to three hundred, and of the
opening of a school for children who had been lepers, but under
the new treatment were now, as far as the most exacting tests

346 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

could show, quite free from disease. The new treatment was
of benefit even to the most chronic cases, and, as Mr. Goudie
said when he visited Dichpalli, ' what had been a home for the
dying was being turned into a place of hope for the living.'
Naturally the children responded most readily to the treatment,
and the idea of a boarding school for these in the vicinity,
where they might pay occasional visits to their suffering parents
and yet be shielded from infection, made the ' Home ' complete.
So conspicuous and so beneficial was the service of Mrs. Kerr
that in 1922 the Government of India conferred upon
her the honour of the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal, but the greater
' decoration ' of a Christ-like spirit had been hers long before.
In the Centenary year great preparation was being made for
the Church of the future. In Karim Nagar, Medak, Ramayan-
pett, Aler, and Secunderabad, large and substantial chapels
were erected as fitting memorials of the year, but large as they
are they will be far too small before many years have run their
course. The following statistics given in 1913 should be
compared with those for 1907 as given on page 339 :

Chapels and other Places for Preaching . . 183

European Missionaries . . *5

Indian Ministers ...... 7

Catechists l88

Local Preachers .... 31

Full Members . . 3,663

Members on Trial . . 7,5*2
Christian Community . . • • I7,°711

Scholars in Schools . . . . 4>J34

We close our record of the work in the Haidarabad District,
so bewildering in the rapidity of its movement, so instinct
with the spirit of Jesus, with a reference to what will be in
creasingly the centre and the spring of all its far-reaching
activities— the Training Institution at Medak. In the Cen
tenary year only fourteen years had passed since it had been
founded, but it was then spoken of as ' one of the most perfect
of its kind in India.' The Rev. J. Gordon Bennett was at that
time its Principal, and he speaks of the curriculum of studies
as being one which ' would amaze many of our students at
home,' Every year saw a steady stream of evangelists passing

» In 1922 this number had increased to 48,000.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 347

into the Circuits to preach to those who were ' still out of the
way ' the unsearchable riches of Christ. As we write we hear
of still further projects in this direction, boldly conceived and
generously provided for, which will add to its efficiency to a
degree which no one will be bold enough to specify beforehand.
The future of this District is big with events which may be
wilder the Methodist Church at home, but it is being guided
by the Spirit of God acting in and through men of vision and
wise judgement and of a very tender heart — the heart of ' the
Good Samaritan/

348 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

(v.) THE BENGAL DISTRICT: 'THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY.'

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God
is ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

So is the Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed upon the
earth ; and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should
spring up and grow, he knoweth not how.

The earth beareth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then the ear,
then the full corn in the ear.

But when the fruit is ripe, straightway he putteth forth the sickle,
because the harvest is come. — MARK iv. 26-29.

The Gospel has a life of its own, mysterious in its working because
divine in its source. But the human heart has an inherent faculty of
response, and when this is exercised the full fruition of life is seen.

The working of this law may be seen in the Santal Mission of the
Bengal District.

The first definite indication that the Wesleyan Missionary
Society contemplated a Mission in Bengal is to be found in a
letter from Mrs. Ann Dale, the daughter of a Wesleyan Minister,
to the Rev. George Morley, dated April 12, 1827. Mrs.
Dale was then residing in Moorshedabad, and she wrote ex
pressing her pleasure at hearing while on a visit to England
that the next Mission to be undertaken by the Methodist
Church would be one in Bengal, and she wished to offer the
hospitality of her home to the Missionaries who might be sent.
In the spring of 1830 the Rev. P. Percival arrived in Calcutta,
and was followed within a few months by the Rev. T. Hodson.
A house was taken for the use of the two Missionaries, and a
Masonic Hall in its vicinity was hired for the purpose of public
worship. This arrangement was, however, found to be ex
pensive, and after three months the services were held in the
residence of the Missionaries. The congregations were ex
ceedingly small. This work was carried on mostly in Portuguese,
which Percival had already acquired, a school was opened for
children who spoke that language and another for those who

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 349

spoke Bengali. The two men at once found themselves in
volved in financial difficulties. Living was costly in Calcutta,
and while the Committee evidently looked to them to secure
relief by way of subscriptions collected locally from those who
were well disposed to the Mission, they found that the English
residents in Calcutta who were inclined to support mission
work were already pledged to contribute to the funds of other
Societies. The Missionaries felt the need of a chapel, but they
pointed out to the Secretaries of the Society that the cost of
erecting one would be very great. The Secretaries replied that
they were ' utterly surprised that you should propose to build
a costly establishment for English service ; a situation (sic)
which cannot answer the purpose of a native chapel/ and they
reminded their representatives that English work was to be
' only incidental.' They also asked them whether a better and
less expensive opening for native work might not be found away
from the city. Percival and Hodson, anxious to carry out the
scheme of the Committee, gave up their home and hired smaller
houses for residence and for their schools, devoting themselves
wholly to work among the Hindus. By doing this they saved
something in rent, but they lost the interest and help of their
European friends. With reference to the question asked by
the Committee, Percival paid a visit of inspection to Bankura,
and reported that a suitable opening might be found in that
town, but he could not obtain any definite instruction from the
Secretaries that he was to abandon the work in Calcutta and
begin elsewhere. Percival had already served in Ceylon, and
was greatly attracted by the work in that island. When he
realized the difficulty of making an effective beginning in
Calcutta, his thought and desire turned towards his former
sphere, and he expressed again and again his wish to be trans
ferred to Ceylon. He was, however, on the point of removing
to Bankura, leaving Hodson to carry on the work in Calcutta,
when the serious illness of his wife necessitated his withdrawal
from Bengal. The proposal that Bankura should be occupied
was abandoned, Mrs. Percival returned to England in 1832, and
Percival accompanied her as far as Madras, where he was to
attend the Synod. He hoped that the Synod would transfer
him to some District in the South. He was, as we have seen,
appointed to take up work at Point Pedro. The few letters
received from the Committee during the course of this ill-starred

350 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

attempt had perplexed rather than guided the men on
the field. One was received from the Rev. John James, one
of the Secretaries, in which plans and estimates for mission
building were discussed. This was quickly followed by another
from the Rev. Richard Watson, suggesting the abandonment
of the Mission. Then for many months they received no letter
at all, but observed that prominence was given to the Bengal
Mission in the reports of the Committee. Successful work
under such conditions was impossible. The men did the best
they could, but they were thrown into a state of uncertainty
by so vague a direction and were greatly disheartened. Finally
they heard, though not in the first instance from the Secretaries,
that the Mission was to be given up. Both men were to do
valuable work in other fields, but three precious years in the
lives of able men had been spent to no purpose, and some three
thousand pounds had been expended on work which was
abandoned before it had any chance of being established.
Twenty-five years were to pass before the Methodist Church
took up again its Mission in North India.

This time it was the Methodist soldier who supplied the
initial impulse. In 1857 it was reported that there were four
hundred Wesleyan soldiers in Bengal, and that they greatly
desired the ministrations of their own Church. In 1859 the
Rev. Daniel Pearson was sent to begin work on their behalf at
Barrackpur. But work among the soldiers, unless it be carried
on simultaneously over the whole area within which the army
moves, is uncertain and fluctuating. Regiments are con
tinually on the move, and a Chaplain may in one particular
year have more work than he can efficiently deal with, and the
next year he may wander disconsolately through the Canton
ment from which his flock has departed.

In 1863 Pearson complained that he had ' scarcely enough to
do.' Meantime, in 1861, the Revs. J. H. Broadbent and H. G
Highfield arrived in Calcutta, the former designated to English
work and the latter to Bengali. In 1862 the Rev. E. E.
Jenkins visited Calcutta and was urgent that work should be
begun at Bankura, thus repeating the conviction of Percival
and Hodson that it was in Bankura that the Methodist Church
would find the true centre of its Mission to Bengal. It was not,
however, until 1870 that the name of this town appears in the
list of Stations.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 351

In spite of sad experiences in South India, the importance of
concentration had not yet been learned either by Missionaries
on the field or by the Committee in England. In 1864 Pearson
visited Lucknow, and urged the beginning of work in that
city. The lure of the English congregation was still strong,
and one reason given for the proposed enterprise was that the
American Methodist Missionaries at work in that city, wiser
than our own men, wished to concentrate on work among
Natives, and were prepared to hand over to our pastoral care
a congregation of two hundred Europeans.1

It was also recommended that Almorah should be occupied,
and the Rev. B. Broadley was even then spending five fruitless
years in Bombay, Poona, and Karachi, while but a single
Missionary was preparing for work among the Bengalis.
Nothing is more grievous in a study of the early efforts of
the Wesleyan Missionary Society than such dissipation of
energy.

The two men in Calcutta, relying upon a promise of five
thousand pounds to be set apart from the Jubilee Fund for
the purpose of their Mission, set about the erection of a chapel
in Sudder Street, and in 1866 that chapel was opened for public
worship. But the promised financial grant was not forth
coming, and a heavy mortgage crippled this Church from the
first, though partial relief was found when the Committee
secured in London a loan for the building fund at a less ruinous
rate of interest than had been demanded in Calcutta. In
1868 Highfield was transferred to Madras, and Broadbent
was left alone in Calcutta, where his work was almost entirely
among Europeans. In the following year he, too, was
removed to South India. The second occupation of Bengal
was no more effective than the former attempt made in
1830.

The Rev. J. Richards was sent out to be Chairman in 1869,
and with him came the Rev. Thomas Rae to take up the
Bengali work. The latter, however, only remained two years
in India, as did his successor the Rev. R. W. Cusworth, while the
Chairman himself returned in 1874. Mission work in Calcutta
can scarcely be said to have begun. What work was done
among the Bengalis was carried on by Catechists recruited

1 The Rev. Joseph Broadbent, the brother of James, was appointed to Lucknow for
military and other English work in 1866.

352 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

from other Missions. The Rev. Joseph Broadbent had died
at Lucknow in 1873, and his place was taken by the Rev. A.
Fentiman from the Mysore District. The vacant Chairman
ship was filled by the last named. A Catechist was sent to
Bankura in 1871, and another to Bishenpur, and this date
must therefore be considered to be that at which work was
begun in what proved later to be the most fruitful section of
the District. Such occupation could scarcely be considered
effective, and in 1876 the Committee determined to strengthen
the work in North India. The Rev. G. Baugh, who had already
given sixteen years' service to Ceylon, was sent out to be
Chairman. By the close of the decade, the Revs. W. C.
Kendall, J. Whitney, J. R. Broadhead, A. H. Male, F. Halliday,
Brignal Peel, and J. A. D. J. Macdonald had all been sent out.
The District at last obtained a Staff not inadequate to its
needs. Baugh, on his arrival, had set forth the needs of the
work in a vigorous letter written to the Secretaries. After
calling attention to the poor results of fifteen years of work,
and they were certainly very poor, he deals with ' the fatal
error of spreading overselves over more ground than we can
work with vigour/ ' Believe me,' he says, ' one or two Mis
sionaries doing mixed work, frequently exchanged, and never
mastering a knowledge of the language or of the manners of
the people, is really no more than playing at mission work,
very little more than mere waste of time and money. If very
much more is not done speedily we ought, in all honour, to
abandon our attempts. ... In order to have a satisfactory
Mission in Bengal, a training institution and a vigorous zenana
work are simple necessities.'

It is distressing to find that after the errors of administra
tion in South India, extending over fifty years, the same failure
to grasp the needs of a Mission in India should reappear.
Baugh continued to urge the Committee to take up the work
in more vigorous fashion. He gave them no respite from his
strongly worded letters, and in a Conference held in Bangalore
in 1877, at which he attended, he so represented the situation
in Calcutta that the Conference agreed to advise the Committee
that the work in North India should be again abandoned
unless it could be done on better lines. The Committee was
at last roused to take the necessary steps and the reinforcement
mentioned was sent out. In 1879 the District was divided,

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 353

and from that date the work in Lucknow and Benares and the
intermediate country came under a separate administration.
The Rev. A. H. Male was at Lucknow, and with him was
associated an Assistant of the name of J. A. Johnson. We
shall meet him again at Fyzabad, but under a different name.
He became known throughout the Methodist Church as
' Elliott of Fyzabad.'

At the close of the disappointing 'seventies the full member
ship of the Calcutta District, apart from Lucknow, was less
than a hundred and fifty. The number is not a large one, and
twenty years had passed since the Mission had made a fresh
start. In the Centenary year the full membership had risen
to fifteen hundred, and the Christian community was double
that number. We shall see that the factors that went to this
development were not extraordinary. They should have
appeared in the Mission from its first inception. They arose
from nothing more than an adequate staff ; adequate both
in number and in capacity. The strong reinforcement sent
out towards the close of the 'seventies secured a distinction —
even then not as complete as it should have been — between
the ministry to Europeans and work in the vernacular. This
led to far greater and more regular attention to village work,
and the Santal Mission followed in due course. It also led to
the fruitful departments of educational work, with its natural
issue in an indigenous Ministry, and philanthropic enterprise.
There is nothing in these factors which might not have been
secured fifty years before, if the Church had received a clear
conception of the conditions of work in India, and had braced
itself to meet them, and, above all, if the directing Committee
had formed a definite policy in its administration and had
consistently adhered to it.

The 'eighties were the formative period of the Bengal Mission.
The men sent out in 1876-1878 were at the commencement of
the decade able to preach to the people in their own tongue,
and they were followed by the Rev. W. M. Spencer in 1880.
In 1881 the Rev. T. H. Whitamore, who had already served
in the West Indies, arrived to take charge of the English work
in Calcutta, and after five years of a very successful ministry,
was followed in 1886 by the Rev. W. H. Hart. In 1884 the
Rev. W. Spink arrived in Calcutta, and it was unfortunate
that a very promising career was cut short in 1892 by the

354 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

failure of Mrs. Spink's health. In 1887 the Revs. G. W. Olver
and F. W. Ambery Smith joined the staff, and each of these
was to make a distinct contribution to the work in this District.
But that which led in the providence of God to the consolidating
and extension of the work was the appointment of the Rev.
J. M. Brown to the Chair of the District in 1883. In the interim
between the departure of the Rev. G. Baugh and the arrival
of Mr. Brown the administration of the District had been
carried on by Mr. Whitamore. Mr. Brown brought to this
work a rich experience gathered during sixteen years of service
in North Ceylon. He had great powers of administration
and a sound judgement. He was supported by a group of
able and devoted men, and he had the joy, when he retired
from the work in Calcutta in 1900, of leaving a strong Mission
where he had found one that was weak. Coming as he did
from Ceylon, where the value of educational work had been
fully proved, it was natural that he should emphasize the work
in this department, and before he left the District this hitherto
neglected department was established on sound lines. In
the elementary schools, in higher education, and in training
men for mission work the District found new sources of
strength. The days of mis-directed and inefficient effort were
ended.

The development of a Native agency was perhaps the most
significant and promising improvement. Where this is lacking
or insufficient, it is a sinister token of impaired spiritual life
in the Church, and there can be little hope of extension. For no
great increase in the European staff can be expected, and even
if it were made, some years must pass before the Missionary
becomes really efficient in the use of the vernacular. The
fitness of the agents employed before the 'eighties may be
imagined from the fact that between 1878 and 1880 no less
than seven of these agents had been dismissed from the service
of the Mission. But in the decade which followed, an entirely
new character was given to this part of the Mission. The men
employed were no longer 'hirelings' but the product of the
Church in which they served. The first Bengal Minister,
whose name appears in the report of the year 1885, was the
Rev. Prem Chand Nath, and two others were that same year
received as Assistant Ministers. With their coming into the
great service, the growth of the Church became more rapid.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 355

A training school for Christian youths was also started at
Barrackpur, this being considered the best station for such an
institution. But Macdonald had a heavy burden to carry
in that town. He was still learning Bengali, and the work
among the soldiers took up a great deal of his time which
should have been given to the study of that language. His
work among the Bengalis had suffered in consequence. He
now adds the work of training to his already excessive burden.
It was in such a way that Missionaries were over-weighted
at a time when they should have been wholly occupied in
study. He hoped that the following year would bring
him a colleague, but when that year came he was removed to
Calcutta, and this led to the beginning of work in Dum Dum
and Gauripur. In spite of such distractions, however, the
staff was now most efficient. The Missionaries were young ;
they had acquired the language of the people, and they gave
themselves up to extensive tours in the villages extending
sometimes over several weeks. They lived in tents and
preached the Gospel and distributed Christian literature
wherever they went. They relied upon this form of appeal
more than they did upon education, and their work began to
bear fruit. Remarkable conversions followed upon their
ministry of the word. The necessity of undertaking a measure
of elementary education, however, could not be denied, and
in 1882 a somewhat novel method of securing this was adopted.
In most villages there was to be found some sort of school,
carried on in a most inefficient manner. These schools were
usually matters of private enterprise, and the}'' were annexed
for missionary purposes by making a small grant-in-aid from
Mission funds. The supervision of the Missionary greatly
increased the efficiency of the school, the villagers learned to
look upon the Missionary as directly interested in what was
for their advantage, and the teaching of the Christian Scrip
tures was introduced. When Missionaries visited such villages
they found an interested and friendly people and a ' pulpit '
from which they could preach. In the course of the year
eighteen such schools were under missionary guidance, and two
years after the number had risen to fifty-two. The method
had a further advantage in this, that it did not necessitate any
outlay of money on sites and buildings.
Another distinctive feature of this period was the instituting

356

of ' Camp Meetings ' which were inaugurated by Macdonald
at Gauripur. These were continued for several years.
Different nationalities were represented in the congregations
that assembled, and Missionaries belonging to several different
Societies took part in the services. The unity of the Christian
Church took place first in service and then in that deeper
communion realized in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
The commencement of the work among the Santals also
belongs to this period. But of this we have written else
where,1 and it will therefore suffice here that we record the

fact.

From the beginning of the 'nineties up to the year 1913, when
this record closes, more than twenty Missionaries were sent
out to this District. Of these some remained at work for only
a few years, failure in health accounting for the brief service
of most of these. Others, such as J. W. Duthie (1890), W. A.
Chettle (1892), H. M. Bleby (1895), T. J. McClelland (1897),
G. E. Woodford (1898), J. Mitchell (1899), were able to remain
longer and each made a definite contribution to the building
up of the Methodist Church in Bengal. J. M. Brown, after
seventeen years of service in the Chair of the District, returned
to work in England, where, as we have seen, he continued to
serve the Missionary Society as Secretary. He was followed
in the Chair of the District by W. H. Hart, but the latter also
returned to England after two years of Chairmanship.
1903 G. W. Olver was appointed to be Chairman, and he still
occupied that post of both honour and responsibility in 1913.
The period now before our attention was one of extraordinary
interest, and nothing but lack of space prevents our dwelling
upon details which are fully charged with both pathos and
romance— the pathos of insufficient strength for the acceptance
of opportunities offered, and the romance of Christ's Kingdom
in the heart of a great people. Missionaries of experience and
of proved capacity were in charge of the chief centres, and
the several departments of work instituted in the previous
decade had arrived at the stage of efficient development.
There was zest and joy among the workers, and every indication
of a living Church.

Macdonald had returned from furlough in 1892, but as a
worker on behalf of the Christian Literature Society.

1 See p. 403-

357

strength of the District was indicated by its willingness to
part with the direct service of so versatile and devoted a
Missionary. But the demand for Christian literature, both
within the Church and outside of its borders, could not be
gainsaid, and what the Methodist Church lost in one way it
gained in another. Ambery Smith was then at Raniganj,
engaged in an enterprise destined to show a remarkable develop
ment within the next few years. Leprosy was more prevalent
in the area between Raniganj and Bankura than in any other
part of India, and in 1893 Ambery Smith, with the ready and
generous aid of the Mission to Lepers in India and the East,
founded an asylum for those who were suffering from this
disease. The expenses were met by the aforesaid Mission,
but the control and direction of the work were in the hands
of the Missionary. Government aid in the matter of buildings
was forthcoming, and accommodation was eventually found
for two hundred patients. A small chapel was built where
they might gather for worship, and the gardens of the settle
ment offered an opportunity for healthful and remunerative
work. Ten years later another similar institution was opened
in Bankura. To these homes of compassion sufferers were
admitted without question of religion or creed, but the tender
ministry of Christian workers, together with regular instruction
in the meaning and purpose of Christ, were quite sufficient to
break down all previously existing barriers, and the great
majority of the inmates readily accepted as their Lord the
great Healer of the souls of men. In after years there was to
come to these who dwelt in the home of despair the hope of
health restored, and a return to some measure of wider human
intercourse. A very necessary adjunct to such homes is a
refuge for the as yet untainted children of lepers, and this
was also built at Bankura.

But Ambery Smith's energies were not yet exhausted.
Raniganj was the centre of the Coolie traffic. Thousands
of coolies were hired here every year for work in the tea
plantations of Assam. As is usual in India where great
crowds assemble, disease continually tended to break out among
them, and many orphans were to be found in the coolie depots.
Mr. Smith opened an orphanage for such children in 1892,
making himself responsible to a large extent for the funds
required for upkeep . This Christian work of pure philanthropy

358 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

received due recognition when the King-Emperor presented
Mr. Smith with the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal in 1912. Unfortun
ately in the following year his break-down in health compelled
his return to England, where after a year's retirement he was
happily able to take up work in English Circuits. He left
behind him in India a record of work the remembrance of
which must ever remain a comfort and consolation to
him.

The year 1896-7 was a year of appalling disaster in Northern
India. Famine was severe and extensive. But for the
palliative efforts of the Government, based upon experience,
dearly bought in previous visitations of this scourge, whole
districts might easily have been depopulated. Famine was
followed by the outbreak of bubonic plague in Bombay, and
its rapid assumption of an epidemic character over the greater
part of India. Remedial measures, misunderstood by those
on whose behalf they were made, led to rioting and the murder
of men who were worn out with their efforts to save human
life. Frontier wars, earthquakes, and cyclones filled to over
flowing the cup of sorrow and suffering. Was there ever such
a year of calamity in this land in which human life is one long
struggle against an ever-impending calamity ? The Mission
orphanages were filled to overflowing, and Ambery Smith
especially had both hand and heart fully occupied. But the
relief of suffering is Christian work, and the grace of God
upheld the Missionaries in their exacting service. Such work,
however, entails a heavy charge upon the finance of a
Mission District. After the impulse which causes generous
and sympathetic persons to offer gifts in relief has passed,
there remains for the Missionary the problem of providing for
those left on his hands. During the time of distress a great
extension of work had been undertaken, and when the funds
available for relief were expended, the Missionaries were at
once confronted with the alternative of dismissing agents and
refusing to enter wide open doors, or else of incurring debts
which would embarrass both themselves and their successors for
years to come. But in spite of such anxieties the work con
tinued to grow. At this stage it exhibits the ' push ' of
vigorous life, and a rootlet can split a solid rock if the life in
it be strong.

In 1899 the Rev. John Mitchell was sent to this District to

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 359

take up educational work in the High School at Bankura. For
many years it had been the strong desire of the Missionaries in
Bengal that a College under its own control should be available
as a centre of evangelistic work among caste Hindus, and in
order to secure the more complete education of promising
Christian students. The people in Bankura, for other reasons,
were anxious to have such an institution in their town.
In 1903 permission was obtained from the Home Committee
to add to the High School a department teaching up to the
standard of Intermediate Arts. The success of students in
this new department was immediate and striking ; the greatest
enthusiasm prevailed in Bankura, and steps were taken at once
with a view to raising the College to the standard of a First
Grade College. The existing buildings, however, were utterly
insufficient, and as one of the conditions laid down by Govern
ment to be fulfilled before such a College could be affiliated to
the University was that hostels should be added to the College
buildings, the scheme seemed to be quite too ambitious. But
apart from the hostel extensive buildings were necessary.
The Inter. Arts classes had been housed only by using mud
huts for boys in the High School department, and even thus
there was not sufficient accommodation. Classes were held in
the Central Hall, but only at the cost of great inconvenience,
and by ignoring the purpose for which the Hall had been erected.
When Government offered a fine site of fourteen acres at a small
price and promised a substantial grant towards the cost of
building Mitchell decided to proceed, and in 1910 the new
College buildings were opened. Mitchell was joined by the
Rev. E. J. Thompson and Mr. W. O. Smith, and under this
most efficient and talented staff the College at once took the
position of one of the best in North India. The hostels were
added in 1912, one for Hindus and another for Christians. In
the Centenary year forty-three students of this College passed
the Inter. Arts Examination and eighteen others graduated.
Such success filled the classes of the College, and the hearts of
the Professors were further gladdened by conversions among
the students attending.

We have not yet come to the end of this list of institutions set
up in Bankura. A Technical School formed another interest and
a valuable adjunct to the work of the Mission. In this school
boys were educated through the medium of their own vernacular,

360 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

and received in addition instruction in such industries
as carpentry and weaving. Here again the Bengal Govern
ment recognized the enterprise of the Missionaries by grants in
aid. Few Missions could show in any one Station so great a
variety of institutions, all worked with efficiency and success,
as were to be found in Bankura.

We have already referred to work undertaken among the
Santal people at Madhupur. In 1907 an important addition
was made to our work in that town. A comparatively large
number of Europeans were to be found there, engaged in
working the coal and mica mines in the neighbourhood, and
the gift of a chapel by a lady enabled our Missionaries to
minister to their spiritual needs. Madhupur thus presents us
with a complete reversal of a tendency which in former days
often led to disappointing results. The Missionaries of those
days used to undertake work among Europeans first, hoping
that it would lead to work among Hindus ; but here they were
already engaged in the work of evangelizing native people when
the needs of their fellow-countrymen became so urgent as to
call for an extension of their ministry to them. Their con
gregations represented many families of the human race.
Yorkshire miners and Scotch engineers worshipped with Jews
and Armenians in the beautiful chapel that was built. It was
opened by the Rev. Mark Guy Pearse, who happened to be
travelling in India at the time.

Barrackpur and Dum Dum are two Circuits in which Mission
work is greatly hampered by work among the soldiers. No one
would wish such work to be abandoned, but unless the Church
makes separate provision for its soldier sons by sending out
Chaplains to minister to them, the work among Hindus is bound
to suffer when both are entrusted to a single Missionary. A
very happy feature of the Barrackpur Circuit is the excellent
Girls' Boarding School which Miss Cornaby had brought to a
high state of efficiency. The school would have served its
purpose still better if more suitable buildings could have been
provided. Barrackpur is the centre of the jute industry, and
the industrial conditions already described as existing in
Raniganj were repeated here. But most of the workers in the
mills spoke Hindi, and there seemed to be little chance of a
Missionary being spared from other parts of the District in
order to acquire the use of that language and attempt the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 361

evangelizing of the thousands of labourers drawn from all over
North India. A great field of work lay open to the Missionaries,
but they could only live in the hope that one day the Com
mittee would authorize them to enter it and provide the
Evangelist.

It is somewhat depressing to return from the fruitful fields
of Raniganj and Bankura to the head quarters of the Mission
in Calcutta. The life and work of the English Church in that
city left little to be desired, and not a few of the laymen of the
Church have worthily upheld the Methodist tradition. But
not even a High School existed to meet the spiritual needs of
the thousands of students in the Capital city of India. Native
work in the decade which preceded the Centenary year was
represented by four elementary schools, and two churches, one
for Bengalis and the other for Hindustanis. These showed a
membership of two hundred and forty full members between
them, and after fifty years of service that is no very satisfactory
result. Faithful men have laboured here, and they have poured
into their service both zeal and ability, but during the very
period when they should have received the fullest measure of
support from the Church in England they were starved both in
men and in money. The result was that at the centre of the
Mission, where we should have been strongest, we were weaker
than elsewhere. It is in the Santal Mission that we come upon
the characteristic work of this District. The Santals are, as we
have said elsewhere, a people who observe a religion which
belongs to the Totemistic class. They represent the degrada
tion of natural religion, inevitable unless enlightened and re
fined by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But they have
never been submerged by Hinduism as the Panchamas of
South India have been. Their capacity for religion has not
been sterilized by the ecclesiasticism of the Brahman, nor
rendered ineffective by the tyranny of caste. There still
remains in them a faculty of response to the Gospel, and that is
why the work in this District may be held to exemplify the
law of the Kingdom of Heaven which our Lord set forth in the
parable of the seed growing secretly. The earth bringeth forth
fruit of itself. That faculty of response will one day be seen
in ' full corn in the ear.'

The numerical statistics as reported in 1913 were as
follows :

362 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Chapels and other Places for Preaching . . . . 35

European Missionaries 13

Indian Ministers 6

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Local Preachers . . . . . . . . . . 24

Full Members i,494

Members on Trial 282

Other Baptized Adherents 1,361

Scholars in Elementary Schools 1,884

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 363

(vi.) THE LUCKNOW AND BENARES DISTRICT : ' THE
MARRIAGE OF THE KING'S SON/

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God
is ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

The Kingdom of God is likened unto a king which made a marriage
feast for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were
bidden to the marriage feast ; and they would not come. Then saith
he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they that were bidden
were not worthy. Go ye therefore unto the partings of the highways,
and as many as ye shall find bid to the marriage feast.

And those servants went out into the highways, and gathered
together all, as many as they found, both bad and good, and the wed
ding was filled with guests. — MATT. xxii. 2-10.

This chapter tells the story of a Gospel preached to all, and accepted
by those who belong to the highways.

The Lucknow and Benares District was constituted in 1879.
Up to that year the work in the area represented was
administered in connexion with the Calcutta District. The
new District did not attain independence by reason of any
marked development of the Church within its borders, nor
because of any great extension of its operations. It was
merely a question of increased efficiency in administration both
in Calcutta and Lucknow, which was answered by making the
one District into two. There were at the time of separation
only two Circuits, Lucknow and Fyzabad, and the membership
of the Church in those two centres amounted to no more than
sixty-one. It was, as we have seen, the call of the soldier,
together with the offer made by the Methodist Episcopal
Church, which led to the beginning of work in Lucknow. In
1893 the District was further divided into three sections,
Lucknow, Bombay, and the Panjab. Eight years later the
two last were constituted a separate District in which, except
for the Marathi Mission in Bombay, the work has been almost
entirely among soldiers and other English-speaking people.

364 PAKABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

In 1879 the Rev. A. Fentiman, who, it will be remembered,
had been transferred from the Mysore District, became the
Chairman of the District. The Rev. A. H. Male was engaged
in military work at Lucknow, and the Rev. T. Carmichael
was at Fyzabad. The last named had his heart set upon a
Mission in Persia, and wrote many letters to the Committee
urging that this should be undertaken. There was never any
great prospect of his wishes being fulfilled, though the Com
mittee seriously considered it and actually gave permission,
only to withdraw it before Carmichael could start. But this
distraction prevented Carmichael from doing any useful work
in Fyzabad, and after four years of service he returned to
England. The Revs. Brignal Peel and F. Halliday were the
remaining two members of the staff, and with them was
associated Mr. Joseph A. Johnson, afterwards known as the
Rev. J. A. Elliott. When war broke out in Afghanistan, Male
accompanied the troops as Wesleyan Chaplain, but when he
returned at the close of the war he found it difficult to settle
down to station work, and he also returned to England.

Almost the first extension of work in the District was the
opening of a mission centre in Benares, to which far-famed
city the Rev. G. W. Jackson (1881) was sent. After a few
months in Benares, he opened a new Circuit in Jabalpur.
Since that time only two new Circuits were added up to the
year 1913, one at Ranikhet and the other at Akbarpur. During
the decade of the 'eighties great interest was awakened by the
prospect of successful work among the Gonds, about two
millions of whom are to be found in the hilly districts of the
Central Provinces. The Gonds were in all probability
Dravidians who broke off from the stream of migration towards
the south of the Peninsula, and their language approximates
to both Tamil and Kanarese, except where it has suffered from
an admixture of Aryan forms. In religion they belong to the
division known as ' Animistic/ but in this, as in language, they
have been influenced by Hinduism, and the practice of idolatry
is common. In all this they would seem to have departed
further than the Santals from their original racial
characteristics. They have, however, maintained a measure of
social independence, and have in consequence not sunk to the
extreme of degradation characteristic of the Panchama class
in South India. It was thought at first that by reason of this

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 365

independence they would more easily than others come under
the influence of Christianity, and the Rev. J. Parson (1882),
while stationed in Jabalpur (1885-6), gave himself up to work
among them with enthusiasm and confidence. The Gossner
Mission in 1841 and the C.M.S. in 1854, and again in 1874,
made attempts to evangelize this elusive people, but no great
success attended their efforts ; and though it was not difficult
to teach them to cry ' Victory to Jesus,' there did not follow
any great ingathering into the Christian Church. The same
result followed upon the Methodist effort. After a few years
of persistent endeavour to win their allegiance to Christ, we
find few references to them in the annual records of work done
in the District. In 1882 the Rev. J. A. Elliott returned from
a course of preparation in Richmond College, and for many
years to come his remarkable personality and his great power
as a preacher attracted the attention and the interest of the
whole Methodist Church. The son of an Irish soldier, he was
born in India, and the two facts account for his personal charm
and his extraordinary command of the language he used in
preaching. Among the great preachers in the many languages
spoken in India he was facile princeps. His influence over
both Muhammadans and Hindus was very great, as may be
judged from the fact that the Municipal Commissioner of
Fyzabad gave him permission to build an open-air pulpit in
the market-place. His rare gifts were given lavishly to the
service of his Lord. On missionary platforms in England he
was most effective, and it is to be feared that this led to his
undertaking more work than should be taken by a Missionary
when he returns for rest. On February 19, 1906, while on
furlough, he died at Hull.

Elliott was too much engrossed by the meaning and purpose
of his ministry to give much attention to finance. In 1888
he wrote to the Secretaries in London a letter in which he
outlines his scheme for securing Mission property in Fyzabad,
where he had obtained as a gift from the Government a site
' perhaps the finest, the most valuable, and the most central
in Fyzabad.' On this site he proposed to erect a chapel, a
Mission house, a Soldiers' Institute and a Girls' Boarding School.
He also hoped to erect in the town a building which should find
room for a chapel, a Boys' Day School, a Lecture Hall and a
Book Depot. He did not allow financial difficulties to dwarf

366 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

his schemes for the extension of Christ's Kingdom, and the
splendid property which eventually he secured remains his
memorial in the city where he spent so many years.

But the Committee was alarmed, perplexed, and indignant
in contemplating the expenditure involved. The Chairman
was blamed for not controlling the enthusiasm of his colleague,
and in 1891 the Rev. John Scott was appointed temporary
Chairman in the hope that he would be better able to exert
the necessary control over this eager Missionary, who saw only
one thing, and that the necessity of equipment sufficient for
the carrying on of the work of his Master.

The staff was strengthened in 1884 by the arrival of the Rev
E. Mortimer, and in the following year by that of the Rev.
E. C. Solomon. Six years after the latter was killed by a fall
from his horse. The loss to the District was very great, for
not only was Mr. Solomon of a peculiarly winsome disposition,
but his scholarly mind had enabled him to master both Hindi
and Urdu, and he gave every promise of being a most efficient
and successful Missionary. Other additions to the staff sent
out during the next few years were the Revs. A. E. Vivian
and S. H. Gregory, both of whom arrived in 1893.

Jabalpur proved to be a very difficult field of work. Both
Parson and Mortimer had worked hard among the Gonds,
but without tangible result, and in 1897, after twenty years of
service faithfully rendered, there was not a single self-support
ing convert in the Circuit. The Native Church consisted
entirely of those who were in the employ of the Mission. This
Circuit was afterwards included in the Bombay District. The
years 1896-1897 were years of severe famine in North India,
and the distressing features of such visitations are familiar
enough to our readers. Parson opened orphanages for boys
and for girls, together with a home for widows in Jabalpur,
and these were quickly filled. Here, as in other Districts,
Christian compassion opened the heart for Christ to enter,
and some scores were baptized. Industries were started
while the famine ran its course. Parson was a contractor
under Government for digging a canal and making roads,
Charcoal-burning and bamboo mat-weaving were other in
dustries set in operation. The Missionary explored every
avenue of occupation if he might save the lives of those who
trusted him. At the close of the decade a Church of more

367

than sixty members was in existence, and there was a promise
of further increase when the boys and girls in the orphanages
grew up. Other orphans were provided for at Akbarpur and
Benares.

The new century saw the coming of the Rev. C. P. Cape
into the District, and to him it fell to begin the Mission to the
Doms of Benares, which up to the present has been the out
standing feature of the work in this District. Mr. Cape had
come to India in 1898, but for two years he had been stationed
at Jhansi, where Methodist work is limited to the service of
the soldier. In 1900 he was at Lucknow, and in 1903 he was
appointed to Benares. Work in this city had been begun by
the Rev. A. Fentiman in 1879, but during the twenty years
which followed practically no impression had been made upon
this stronghold of Hinduism, the ' Mecca ' of devotees from
every corner of the Peninsula. At the close of the nineteenth
century there were twenty-eight church members in a city
whose population, resident and pilgrim, numbered a quarter
of a million. Into that vast hive of Hindu life, where both
the strength and the weakness of Hinduism are to be seen in
their most pronounced forms, was sent one young Missionary
with one Indian Minister to help him. Nor had the two other
Missionary Societies at work in the city been able to provide
much more in the way of effective force for the winning of
this hoary citadel — so strong in its ecclesiastical pride and
power, so pitifully weak in all that made for the enlightenment
and moral uplifting of human life. To stand in the public
ways on days of high festival, when many thousands of pilgrims
in a frenzy of religious enthusiasm were on their way to the
temple of Durga — the favourite goddess of the Thugs of bygone
days, — and standing there to proclaim the Gospel of the living
God, must have seemed to Hindus an exhibition of contemptible
effrontery, and to the Missionary an utterly futile proceeding.
Cape gave himself up — so far as the military duties would
allow — to touring among the villages, in which he sought to
gain some foothold where life was less disturbed by the excite
ments of the crowd. One day a man came forward to ask
for baptism into the Christian fellowship. That man was a
Dom, an object of loathing to Hindus, and of contempt to
Muhammadans, but to the Christian a man for whom Christ
died.

368 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

The Doms have their history, but it is obscured by the mists
of centuries. That they are neither Aryans nor Aborigines,
but Dravidians, has been fairly established, but it is not known
how they came to lapse into the social position which made
them the common scavengers of Benares — one of the filthiest
cities in the world — and generally the menial servants of all
other classes, so that even the outcaste Chamars consider
themselves denied by the most casual contact with them.
So much for their social standing. In morals they live by
stealing and every form of deceit, drunkenness is ingrained
in their habit of life, and their women are prostitutes. Their
religion is a combination of Animism and Hinduism, and as
the most popular object of their worship was himself a
notorious thief, it may be inferred that with them morality
and religion are closely connected. Surely in the Doms of
Benares we must come upon the lowest rung of the social scale.
Could such as these have any place in the banqueting- chamber
of the King ?

In 1905 the first movement of the Doms towards the
Christian Church is recorded in the annual Report. In that
year twenty were baptized, and our question was answered.
The ' wedding garment ' was seen in an immediate improve
ment in the matter of personal cleanliness. In such matters
as the eating of carrion and the use of intoxicating liquor it
further became apparent that habits of life as well as clothes
were in process of cleansing, and lest we be tempted to look
upon such matters as trivial, we must remember that these
habits had been followed for centuries until they were part
and parcel of ' the make-up of the man.' Such changes reveal
the miracle of a new creation in Christ Jesus ; they are the
indubitable sign of ' a clean life ensuing.' That, now and
again, one or more of these converts should relapse into the
pit from which they had been digged, evokes, or should do,
sympathy rather than disappointment. In 1907 Mr. Cape
reports that two hundred adults and children had been bap
tized, though the famine of that year brought unspeakable
suffering to the village Doms from amongst whom most of
these converts had come. In 1908 eleven village commun
ities were under instruction for baptism, and the number of
Doms in prison for theft began to show a marked diminution.
A note by Mr. Cape in the Report for that year is worth quoting :

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 369

A big demand for soap and cocoanut oil has arisen, and the cleaner
clothes and persons of our Christians are matters for congratulation.
In one hamlet, at first most filthy and hopeless, we now find not only
clean-swept thresholds, but an attempt at a flower garden, planted,
we were informed, ' for its beauty's sake.'

That men whose daily occupation was to sweep the open
sewers and remove the accumulated filth should turn to cultivat
ing a flower garden ' for its beauty's sake ' ! One needs no further
evidence of the profound change being wrought in the lives
of the Doms, and it was only the external sign of a still greater
change in mind and heart. The number of converts continued
to increase. In 1909 the Dom Christian community numbered
more than three hundred, though only a few of these were
admitted into the full membership of the Church. The total
number of members for that year in Benares was thirty-two,
and this number included Christians of all classes. The
difficulty of pastoral work among the Dom converts, through
which alone they could be made fit for full membership in the
Church, now made itself felt. Such work called for the utmost
patience and wisdom. The burden it entailed must have been
overwhelming had it not been supported by Christian love.
There can be no more damning accusation brought against
Hinduism than is to be found in the fact that there were those
who sought to undo the work of the Christian Church on behalf
of these despised people, and would fain have persuaded these
hard-won converts to abandon their new-found faith with its
promise of moral and social uplifting, and to revert to their
former manner of life. Under such circumstances the Mis
sionaries felt that one false step on their part — and how easily
it might have been taken ! — would be quite enough ' to stampede
the flock.'

In 1912 the Rev. R. F. Horton, D.D., visited Benares, and the
record of his impressions will be the best possible summary of
the character of the work done in this department. The
reader will not fail to give its full significance to the reference
made to the Brahman Catechist.

There is no part of Europe where you can see people like these.
They are hardly human. Their expressions and gestures are the marks
of a lower order of beings. I went into the slums where they live.
The first slum I entered was a foul, comfortless place, with the huts all
round, and the main hut was occupied by a man whose duty it is to
24

370 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

hang criminals — the public hangman — and he had to be called in to
perform his duty in the little interval between my two visits to Benares.
But over the door of this man's house was a text written, and I asked
my friends to translate it. It was ' Jesus Christ came into the world
to save sinners.' This man, when we arrived, brought out a sort of
bedstead from his miserable hovel and asked me to sit down, and I sat
among them with Mr. Spooner and Mr. Allen, and by our side was the
converted Hindu who is entrusted with the care and oversight of this
people. He is a Brahman ; Charles Dalahalla is his name. I watched
his face and it seemed a miracle. The Doms are the offscouring of all
things, and there is probably not a person of Hindu blood who would
eat or mix with them. Yet there was this Brahman standing and
looking at them with loving eyes. He has taught them how to sing
hymns. He has taught them to recite Scripture, and the look on his
face as he watched those poor creatures touched me to the quick. It
was very wonderful to see two English gentlemen sitting and talking
to them, but it was ten times more wonderful to see that Brahman of
the Brahmans there to teach them, to love them, to save them. . . .
In the second group I visited, we gathered them around us, and as
the speaker was addressing them the people in the street were arrested
and came and listened. There were contemptuous-looking Muslims
and righteous-looking Hindus all crowded round as the preacher told
the outcastes the meaning of the Gospel, and the poor things responded
to the best of their ability. It is not pretended that their confession
produces a lofty type of character at once. But they steal less, and
drink less, and long for something better. No one could be there
without being conscious that the Spirit of Jesus was there, and that
this was just the kind of work that Jesus would do. ' This Man
receiveth sinners.' ' This Man ' would go to the Doms.

Our extract is a long one, but the picture it gives is nearly
perfect. It shows the kind of work the Missionary does among
such people, and it indicates the success he meets with at both
ends of the social scale. This work among the Doms was
presently recognized by the Government, and when it was
proposed to build barracks for these lowly workers in Benares,
our Missionaries were asked by the Government to undertake
the supervision of them. In the Centenary year the Christian
community in Benares numbered six hundred and seventeen,
but the number of ' full members ' still remained low.

In 1909 another hopeful movement began to appear at
Akbarpur among the Chamars. These form a low division
of the outcaste population, and like the Madigas of Haidarabad
are workers in leather, though these people were mostly
employed in the fields. Like the outcastes of other Districts
they were hopelessly entangled in the toils of the landowners

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 371

and moneylenders. Their creditors had no wish to have their
debts repaid in cash. They received a far more lucrative
return in the labour of their debtors, who became to them the
most helpless and abject of serfs. Naturally they resisted the
efforts of the Missionaries to bring anything like freedom into
the lives of these victims of greed and selfishness. There
seemed every probability of a community movement among
the Chamars also, and in the Centenary year a few baptisms
had already taken place.

Ranikhet is an interesting Circuit. It is the most northern
of all our Mission Stations in India, and is situated on one of
the main roads leading to Thibet. Work was originally begun
here on behalf of the soldiers, but when the W.M.S. decided
to withdraw from this work on the Station their school and
other property were taken over by the L.M.S., and the
pastoral care of the Christians on the Station was undertaken
by a former Catechist of our Mission, Mr. Ibrahim Rolston.
Here and also at Akbarbur the Christian community is still
small, though at any moment large accessions may be reported,
especially at Akbarpur. At the last-named Station in 1897,
the death occurred of the Rev. J. R. Rolston, a faithful and
much beloved Indian Minister. He had fought as a volunteer
on the British side at Lucknow, and served the Mission for
many years as a Catechist. In 1882 he was ordained. The
last and best years of his service were spent at Akbarpur.
Here and also at Amethi, fifteen miles from Lucknow, there is
an instalment of Medical work, which deserves and calls for
a great extension.

Educational work in the District has not yet developed. The
high school at Lucknow made a fresh start when at last, in
1904, suitable buildings were erected. Attached to this school
is a hostel for Christian students, and in 1913 its accommoda
tion was strained to the uttermost. Theological training was
at first begun at Lucknow, but afterwards it was located at
Benares, where we find it in 1911. A striking and suggestive
account of this institution is given by the Rev. J. F. Edwards
in the Foreign Field for 1911. The students then in residence
included a grandson of the Prime Minister of Nepal, a con
verted Brahman priest, a merchant, a Sikh from the Pan jab,
and a Dom. The variety of races represented is remarkable,
and their association with a Dom shows how completely the

372 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

social barriers had been broken down. All had been made
one in Christ Jesus, and all were enlisted in the service of their
Lord. Another institution in this District, though afterwards
included in the Bombay District, is the orphanage at Jabalpur.
This was the outcome of the great famine of 1897, and had
developed into an Industrial School with substantial buildings
standing in thirty-five acres of ground, and with a resident
Missionary to direct its many occupations and to have the
spiritual oversight of the boys who were in training.

In 1892, at the request of the Australian Conference, a
Missionary was sent from this District to minister to the Indian
coolies employed in Fiji. The Missionary who offered to obey
this call was a Brahman convert, and so once again the miracle
wrought by Christ stands before us in the service of the lowest
by the highest of the castes in India. That loan in 1892 was
repaid with interest in 1909 when two Australian Missionaries
were sent to this District to study the language and conditions
of work with a view to opening an Australian Methodist Mission
in this part of India. The names of the Missionaries were the
Revs. J. H. Allen and F. L. Nunn.

Between 1890 and the Centenary year there was no great
change in the staff of the District except in the matter
of the Chairman. Missionaries were now able to remain at
work for a much longer period than their forerunners had
done. The conditions which govern life for Europeans in
India had become better known, and it was now possible for
men to live in India and to work hard without any great risk
of breaking down in health. The advantage of securing
experienced men for the directing of the multifarious opera
tions of the Mission was very great. It was some time, how
ever, before it was found possible to secure a Chairman who
was able to remain for any long time at his onerous post. The
Rev. A. Fentiman returned to England in 1891, and we have
already recorded the name of his successor, the Rev. John
Scott. At the end of one year the Rev. J. M. Brown was
asked to add the administration of this District to that which
he already had in hand in Calcutta, and he continued to act
in this double capacity until 1900, when the Rev. E. Martin
was appointed to the Chair of the District. Mr. Martin had
already spent four years in North Ceylon, and his lovable and
courteous personality, added to his great ability, was an

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 373

invaluable asset to the Synod over which he presided. In
1905 he was followed by the Rev. W. Terry Coppin, whose
work on the West Coast of Africa has already been before us.
But service in Africa had proved expensive in the matter of
his general health, and after less than a year he was obliged
to return to England. By that time it was found possible
to appoint to the Chair one who had already been at work
in the Lucknow District, and the choice fell upon the Rev.
S. H. Gregory, who was still Chairman when the Centenary year
arrived. Other Missionaries who were able to remain at work
for upwards of ten years, were the Revs. A. T. Cape and his
brother C. P. Cape, who both arrived in India in 1898, and
J. Reed (1900), G. Spooner (1906), G. H. Kay (1907), J. R.
Hudson (1907), W. Machin (1909), and A. Sanderson (1911).
Of these Spooner, Sanderson, Hudson, and Machin were still
in the District when this chapter was being written in 1923.

The numerical statistics given in the Centenary year were
as follows :

Chapels and other Preaching Places . . . . 13

European Missionaries . . . . . . . . 9

Indian Ministers . . . . . . . . . . 6

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Local Preachers . . . . . . . . . . 10

Full Members . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

On Trial for Membership . . . . . . . . 162

Other Baptized Adherents . . . . . . . . 1,260

Scholars in Elementary Schools . . . . . . 763

These results are not as impressive as those to be found in
other Districts, but the difficulty of this particular field must be
borne in mind, together with the caution, necessarily observed,
before admitting Doms and Chamars to the full membership
of the Church. It is in these converts that the distinguishing
feature of the District is to be found, and when they have
been fully proved, such statistics may present a very different
appearance. The community movement has scarcely yet been
sufficiently advanced for the Church to feel the momentum
which brings thousands into the Christian Church. The
District, in accepting and caring for these, well illustrates that
law of the Kingdom of Heaven whose parable is that of ' the

374 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Marriage of the King's Son.' The Gospel invitation had been
given to the lordly Brahman and to the proud Muhammadan,
but they ' made light of it.' ' They that were bidden to
the feast were not worthy.' ' So the King's servants went
out into the highways, and gathered together all, as many as
they found, both bad and good, and the wedding was furnished
with guests.'

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 375

(vii.) THE BOMBAY AND PANJAB DISTRICT : ' THE PEARL
OF GREAT PRICE'

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God
is ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

The Kingdom of God is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking
goodly pearls ; and having found one pearl of great price, he went and
sold all that he had, and bought it. — MATT. xiii. 45.

' Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor.' Christ
gave up all that He had to win man's heart for God. The same
spirit appears in all Christ-like men.

For witness we tell the story of the Marathi Mission in Bombay.

We have seen how Mr. and Mrs. Harvard were detained in
Bombay while their companions on that memorable voyage
to the East went on to Ceylon. Harvard could not be idle
while he waited. He formed a small Society, and consulted
his colleagues as to the desirability of his remaining in Bombay
and establishing a Mission in that great city. The sugges
tion, however, did not meet with their approval, and he went
on to Ceylon. But in 1816 the Committee sent out the Rev
J. and Mrs. Homer to do what Harvard had proposed. A
second Missionary, the Rev. J. Fletcher, was sent out in 1819,
by which time one or two schools had been opened. The two
men were very soon in difficulties. After sixteen months of
its existence the Mission was reported by the Committee to
have overdrawn its account by nine hundred pounds, and the
Rev. W. B. Fox was instructed to make a strict inquiry into
the matter. No fruit to the labour of the Missionaries was
apparent, and the two men were in hopeless disagreement.
The Mission to Bombay had made a very bad start. Yet in
1819 the Committee reported that ' the accounts from our
laborious and excellent Missionary, Mr. Horner, are very
satisfactory.' We may not linger over the details of this
melancholy chapter of the history of Methodist Missions in
Bombay. Both men broke down in health. They returned
to England without waiting for permission, and for this, and

376 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

for their mismanagement of the work entrusted to them, they
received a severe censure from the Committee.

In 1858 Methodist soldiers in Karachi were meeting in class
and asking for a Minister to be sent out to them. In response
to their appeal the Rev. B. Broadley was sent to Bombay to
reconnoitre with a view to making a fresh start, and for more
than four years he ministered to soldiers in Karachi, Poona,
and Ahmednagar. In 1866 he returned to England, and the
Committee, in view of the embarrassed state of their funds, did
not propose to send out any one to succeed him. The second
attempt had failed. The third was not made until 1886, and
the Missionary appointed to Bombay was the Rev. G. W.
Clutterbuck. He was sent out with the proviso that his
maintenance was to be provided from local funds, and that
on no account was he to incur any unapproved expenditure.
Clutterbuck was a man of great courage and determination.
He built chapels at Byculla and Igatpuri, and rented a house
at Colaba. In spite of warnings he had by 1889 launched
building schemes without having received the sanction of the
Committee, and when the difficulties accruing were most
acute, his wife's health compelled his return to England.
Meantime the Rev. J. H. Bateson, who had accompanied the
troops sent out to Burma, was instructed to undertake military
work in the Pan jab, with important results to be recorded in
due course. To return to Bombay. The Committee was
finally obliged to find more than three thousand pounds to
meet the expenses incurred by Clutterbuck, and in 1891 the
Rev. John Scott was sent out to bring under some better
control the enthusiastic but improvident Missionaries in Bom
bay and Fyzabad. He accomplished a great deal during the
short time he spent in India, and it was by his advice that
Bombay was recognized as a Circuit attached to the Lucknow
and Benares District. The Rev. E. Mortimer was sent to
take charge of the work in Bombay in 1892, and through his
zeal and energy the chapel at Colaba was completed and opened.
When, two years after, the Rev. G. C. Walker followed Mr.
Mortimer, the Methodists of Bombay had a chapel in which
they could worship and the Missionary a house in which he
could live with a fair amount of comfort. Clutterbuck had
certainly landed the Committee in expenses for which they
had not reckoned, but the Rev. J. M. Brown, in reporting on

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 377

his visit to Bombay, spoke words of characteristic wisdom
when he said : ' The experience of the last few years has taught
us that it is almost impossible to build up a spiritual Church
until there is a home into which that Church may be gathered,
localized, and nourished.' Missionary Committees of bygone
days were very slow in learning that lesson of experience.
With the opening of the chapel at Colaba the initial difficulties
of the Bombay Mission were to a great extent removed, and Mr.
and Mrs. Walker gave themselves up with diligence and de
votion to the duties that devolved upon them. Both were
teachers of experience, and on the reopening of the day school
they both took part in the work of teaching. When in 1901
they were transferred to Bangalore to take up similar duties
there, they left at least a church in being to their successor,
the Rev. Walter Seed.

Hitherto we have followed the course of events which led
to securing a local habitation and a home for the Church in
Bombay. That Church was composed wholly of British soldiers
and other Europeans residing in the city. We must now turn
to the unique story of the missionary work built up by one
man a converted Hindu, who by sheer force of character
and complete devotion to Christ gathered together in a
peculiarly dark quarter of the city a Christian Church. When
Samuel Rahator gave his heart to Christ in the mission
service held at Igatpuri by William Burgess and General
Campbell, he gave it without reservation. Thenceforward
he knew nothing save Christ and Him crucified. He at once
began to publish the good news of new life in Christ Jesus,
and was at work even before Clutterbuck discovered him, and
appointed him to be a recognized Catechist of the Wesleyan
Church, ' not without hope,' said the Missionary, ' that our
first Catechist may be the first Native Wesleyan Methodist
Minister in western India.' Clutterbuck left India, but Rahator
remained, and continued his unpretentious but effective service.
For a long time he was absolutely alone in the work, for when
Missionaries came to Bombay they could take no part in his
service, both because of their preoccupation in English work,
and because of their ignorance of Marathi. The Church which
he served was unable to support its servant except to the
extent of such contributions as he could secure from those
in the city who knew and valued his work. There were no

378 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

funds from England to assist him in securing suitable buildings.
He gave himself up to preaching in the streets. Morning and
evening, in a section of Bombay containing a population of a
quarter of a million, sunk in vice, and with no other Protestant
Church at work, this truest Missionary bore his witness to the
power of Christ to save men from sin. After a time he collected
enough money, mostly from non-Christians, to build a small
school-house, and until 1906 this was the only property be
longing to the Marathi Mission in Bombay. After some time
other schools were opened in hired buildings. The famine
of 1901 led to the opening of an orphanage at Mahim, nine
miles from Bombay, and Rahator's earnest work among
the boys and girls led to the conversion of many. As
the boys grew up many of them became teachers and
Catechists. In 1897 the Church came near to losing
this precious life. Plague was prevalent in Bombay
during that year, and Rahator's brother fell a victim to the
scourge. Rahator himself was also stricken down, but in the
mercy of God he recovered from the disease, and as we write
this chapter in 1923 he is still carrying on his work in Bombay.
Now, however, in other conditions. In 1892 he was ordained
into the Christian Ministry, and in 1908, with the help of a
grant from the Missionary Committee, a chapel was built for
the Marathi Christians in Parel. Previous to that date
service was conducted in the chapel for English folk at Byculla,
and the use of this chapel was continued, so that the Marathi
Mission now has two centres of activity in Bombay. Other
preaching-places were opened, and work was begun in two
village centres. In 1913 the Mission reported a membership
of a hundred and thirty. In all our Mission field in India there
is no similar instance of an Indian Christian thus building up,
unaided and all but unrecognized, a Christian Church in the
heart of a great city. That Church has been spontaneous in
its inception and development, and as such it is the earnest
of Churches which we may hope to see in other fields. The
Methodist Church may well hold in remembrance and honour
this devoted Minister. When, during the time in which he
worked alone, it was suggested to him that it would be to the
furtherance of his work if it were incorporated with that of the
Methodist Episcopal Mission, he refused to consider the matter.
He remained faithful to the Church through whose ministry the

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 379

light had broken into his heart. He was held captive by the
truth which laid hold on him at Igatpuri. As a modern writer
has said,1

The endeavour to be true to experience strikes me at this moment
as the most precious privilege of all. To have found a loyalty from
which one cannot escape, which one must for ever acknowledge, no —
one cannot ask for more.

Rahator had found the pearl of great price, and he went and
sold all that he had that that goodliest pearl might be his.

Mention has been made of Byculla. Here the first Methodist
chapel in Bombay was erected by Mr. Clutterbuck. It was a
modest building, but it was the birthplace of precious souls.
Good work was done here notably by Mr. F. R. Atkins, who,
after serving as a Lay Evangelist, was admitted into the
Indian Ministry in 1899.

In 1901 ' Bombay and the Panjab ' was constituted a
separate District. But with the exception of the Marathi
Mission in Bombay, it was understood that work was to be
limited to military cantonments, and was to be carried on by
the Chaplains appointed to army work. The Rev. Walter
Seed returned to England in 1903, and was followed at Bombay
by the Rev. C. Ryder Smith. Five years after the latter also
returned, being succeeded by the Rev. J. F. Edwards, who
arrived in Bombay in 1908. In 1910 a Bible-woman was
appointed to work under the direction of the Rev. S.
Rahator. This ministry of a woman to women is a most
fruitful one. The Bible- woman enters the crowded ' Chawls/
and brings to the women and children in them the Gospel
which has meant the uplifting of womanhood wherever it has
been received into responsive hearts.

The military work in this District has an importance of its
own, and full justice cannot be done to it in these pages. The
relation of the British soldier to most of our great Missions
has been recorded on many pages of this History, and doubtless
former precedents might have been followed in North- West
India and the ministry to the soldiers have led on to the be
ginning of work among non-Christians. But in view of their
commitments in other fields, the Committee of late years has
not been in favour of undertaking such work, and there is no
immediate probability of missions to Hindus being undertaken

1 Mr. J. M. Murry in the first number of The Adelphi,

380 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

by those who minister to the British soldier and to English
residents in the Cantonments where he may be stationed. The
agency used has been that of the military Chaplain supple
mented by lay agents and Ministers called into the work locally.
Such Ministers have done excellent work. One of them, Mr.
Leonard Hill, was at work as ' an acting Wesleyan Chaplain '
before the Mission to Bombay was resuscitated by Mr. Clutter-
buck. After many years of devoted service among the soldiers
Mr. Hill passed to his reward in 1891.

Regular and effective military work among Wesleyan
soldiers in India began with the appointment of the Rev. J. H.
Bateson to Ambala in 1888. The year before this Mr. Bateson
had served as chaplain to the troops in Upper Burma, but with
his coming to North- West India the pastoral care of Methodist
soldiers was taken up as it never could be when such work
was left to the fragments of time which a Missionary engaged
in work among Hindus could spare. Mr. Bateson accomplished
much in the organization of his department, and in 1908 he
was able to report that the Methodist Church had ten chapels
and five Manses, with the full allowance of eleven Chaplains
and three Laymen, all having been provided without drawing
on the funds of the Missionary Society in England. In 1889
Mr. Bateson was appointed Secretary of the Army Temperance
Association in India, in which position he was able to exert
much influence on behalf of Methodist soldiers. The military
authorities were slow in giving to the Wesleyan Church any
thing like a practical recognition of its place and service in
the army, but in 1911 a new scheme for the administration
of the chaplaincy department was sanctioned by the Govern
ment of India. Under this arrangement fourteen chaplaincies
were granted to the Wesleyan Church, and of these, ten were
situated in North- West India. This brought great financial
relief, and the recognized status of our Ministers increased
their influence in the army. Wesleyan soldiers might now
hope to find the ministry of their Church awaiting them on
arrival at most of the great military centres in India. Soldiers'
Homes were provided in such centres, and many a soldier has
found in India the way to Christ. Wesleyan soldiers are not
lacking in missionary spirit, and their offerings for work among
Hindus found a most suitable destination when they were sent
to further the Marathi Mission in Bombay.

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 381

(viii.) THE BURMA DISTRICT : ' THE MUSTARD SEED '

The Kingdom of God is the world of invisible laws by which God
is ruling and blessing His creatures. — DR. HORT.

The Kingdom of God is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a
man took and sowed in his field ; which, indeed, is less than all seeds ;
but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree,
so that the birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof. —
MATT. xiii. 31-32.

The infinitely small may become the infinitely great, and the
Mission in Upper Burma may well provide a home for many thousands
of the children of God.

The Mission to Burma is the latest of those undertaken by
the Methodist Church in a new country, — for the Mission in
Rhodesia was an offset from that in the Transvaal. As early
as 1824 the Missionaries at that time in South India had
listened to the plea of Methodist soldiers in Rangoon, and had
suggested to the Secretaries in London that a Missionary
should be sent to begin work in that city. The full time,
however, had not yet come, and if the attempt had been made
it would probably, in view of the limited funds then at the
disposal of the Missionary Committee, have proved to be as
premature as that which was made in Calcutta. It was not
until the annexation of Upper Burma in 1886 that the Com
mittee began to consider seriously the question of entering
the newly acquired Province. The way had been prepared
for them in the year preceding, for at the annual Meeting of
the Society in Exeter Hall, both the Chairman — known at
that time as Mr. H. H. Fowler, and afterwards as Lord Wolver-
hampton — and the President of the Conference had spoken
strongly in favour of a more aggressive policy. Towards the
close of that meeting, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, in a
characteristic speech, expressed the hope that the Committee
would take courage from their words, and ' attempt something
fresh.' ' Within the last twenty- five years we had actually

5; PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

started only ooe fresh Mission in hcathm lands. In the

I;';.;-.-.--; y;ir i '.~::~7 •••• ^ received bom the Rev V.' R ^ •„-.-
ston, then in Sooth India, in which he declared that he felt
a strong inward call to offer his sa vines to the Committee in
case they should consider the opening of a Mission in Banna,
and in the Mitimm of that year he leuaved instructions to
visit Burma with the Rev. J. M. Brown of Calcutta, to survey
the field and to report The Committee in justifying their

'.:.-'•

' would have hesitated to occupy Burma if it were not a midway

Many years seem likely to pass before the railway inns btUmn
Rangoon and Hankow.

The two Missionaries in their report found that Missionary
were afoeadv at work m Lower Burma, but the whole

of Upper Burma— a Uaiiluiy one and a half times the area of
Great Britain— was open to them. At the same time they
iin^j^l fKat the 'ifiqcMi should be undertaken in strength,
ornotatalL At feast four great centres with six Missionaries
should be secured, and each centre should be surrounded with
a netamk of fainmy sr>>"^s to be wuked so as to be the
feeders of a Central School or Training Institution Mis
sionaries should be f"**™*-***! to give their attention to die
:: 2jr. n:i:rei::-r :..:': -. ever."

Soch was the ideal The actual appointment took the man
of Mr. Winston for Native work, a military Chaplain to the
Army of Occupation, in which the Rev. ]. H. Bateson was
ahgmly iiqviBg in that capacity, and, in ^MH'lfrp», an cipcit-
enced Native Agent from one of the Sinhalese Districts in
Ceykm. In 1887 the troops were withdrawn from Upper
Burma, and with them went the Wesleyan Chaplain ; but
tmmus the dose of that year the Rev. A. H. Bestall was sent
out to join Mr. Winston, and early in the following year the
:~ : —r.n z-^rir.

scattered people of Upper Burma.

TJM> Buddhism observed by the Burmese people differs
from that which is followed in Ceylon and also from that
fallowed in Thibet. It is probably in Ceylon that the teaching
of ^*"*j«^» is most strictly observed. Both in Burma and
in Thibet there has been a ^•••ifcMM* incorporation of eartier
beliefs and «"«-^F"«I AfTi""Mli' religion has left distinct

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 383

traces of its influence in the practice, if not in the faith, of
Buddhists in these countries. Yet there is a marked difference
between the Buddhism of Thibet and that of Burma,
arising, strange to say, out of the atheism common to both.
In Thibet the corollary drawn from that historic negation is
seen in the darkness of despair. In Burma it appears in the
very opposite direction, and may be expressed in the familiar
words : ' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' The
gaiety and bght-heartedness characteristic of life in Banna
afford a striking contrast with the apathy of India and the
blank despair of Thibet. Yet the light -heartedness of Burma
is, from one point of view, as deplorable as the austerity and
gloom of Thibet. It shows itself in fickle-mindedness and an
irresponsible attitude to the great ethkal verities which does
not make for moral stability. Missionaries feh the need of
extreme caution in accepting professions of belief in Christ
from those whose general tendency was to flit like butterflies
from flower to flower. The substratum of Animism appears
in the fear of evil spirits. The Thirty-seven Nats play a
prominent part in the religious observance of every Burman.
A passage from the Report of the Rev. William Goudie on the
occasion of his Secretarial visit in 1921 is apposite here as
revealing some of the difficulties met by the Missionaries in
their efforts to bring the Burmese to Christ.

Suiiuat is not India, and Buddhism offers even stronger
than Hinduism to the impact of the GospeL I doubt very much
whether even the resistance of Islam is greater than that of Buddhism
to the work of the Christian missionary. Some of the leaaons for th«
are fairly obvious. Nominally the people are not *l«*iitffi^ though
the weakness of their faith is seen in their universal resort to protective
magic There is moreover no such *qtmkr or jmifaii^r jmraig them
as in other places appeals to nirjgHa« philanthropy, and gives an
opportunity for commending Christian compassion. The ^"qrrf are
altogether spiritual, and in thi> there ought to be a distinct advantage ;
but the people are singularly unresponsive to yppfal, for this rryp". if
I judge rightly, that Buddhist teaching and Buddhist practices followed
through many generations have so sapped and emasculated «*"^rtfr
thai V.T act 0 fat BK tine : -.-.: .. ...- : -:r:r.r :r.:r:t:: :: ::'

ready response to even the most powerful appeal.

On the social side of life the outstanding feature is the part
played respectively by the sexes. At some time or other,
generally in youth, every male becomes a monk for a period

384 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

which may be long or short. The consequence has been that
now the men live a dronish life. The executive and practical
administration of life is carried on by the women, and this
division of interests is not conducive to sexual morality. The
Burmans have a high appreciation of learning and literature,
and this characteristic suggested the emphasizing of educa
tion as one of the chief ' planks ' in the missionary platform
of propaganda. The experience of the Societies at work in
this country showed that both as the preparation of a ' seed
bed ' for the Gospel and as a necessary element in the training
of Christian youth, nothing afforded greater assistance to the
Missionary than secondary and higher education. The
influence of the monastery schools was as great in extent as
it was pernicious in character.

Such was the general situation confronting our Missionaries
as they addressed themselves to the work of evangelizing
Upper Burma. Mr. Winston was able in 1887 to purchase a
plot of ground measuring five and a half acres in Mandalay.
Here he was joined by two Evangelists from the Wesleyan
Mission in South Ceylon, C. A. de Silva and D. S. Kodicara,
both of whom had been trained in the Institution at Galle.
Of these the former became the first Native Minister of the
Methodist Church in Burma, and the latter spent many years
in educational work. An English school was opened, and the
charge of it fell to Mr. Bestall, and a boarding school for girls
was greatly desired. Coming, as he did, from Ceylon, Mr.
Winston was likely to consider this the most promising field
of labour, and the absence of caste restrictions in the country
made it all the more promising. A school of this kind was
actually opened in a small temporary building, but for two
or three years it had a struggle to exist. It was not until 1899
that the first representative of the Women's Auxiliary appeared
in Mandalay in the person of Miss Agnes Vickers.

In 1888 Bestall began work in Pakokku, living in a bamboo
hut until a Mission house could be built, and opening a school
where he taught with such effect that at the first examination,
conducted by the Government Inspector of Schools, this
school stood highest of all in Upper Burma. In 1892 Mr.
Winston could report that the Municipal school had been
closed, and the boys, the buildings, and funds for the salaries
of teachers had all been handed over to the Mission. This

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 385

case strongly supported Winston's contention that an effort
should be made to acquire control — as was then possible —
of the whole of the elementary education of the District. The
opportunity, however, passed, as a similar one had done in
the Mysore State.1 The Church was not prepared to enter
' the open door.' The school building erected in Pakokku
also served as a chapel, and in 1913 there were more than a
hundred members in this Circuit.

Winston was equally insistent in pressing the need of a
suitable building for the girls' boarding school on which his
heart was set, and here he could point to the conversion of the
Burman princess, whose story afterwards became well known
to the Methodist Church in England, as indicating the fruit
to be gathered in such a school. ' No girl/ said Mr. Winston,
' can pass through the school without being converted.' In
1894 a beautiful and commodious house was built for this
school. There were then twenty-eight boarders in residence
and accommodation for double that number.

The year 1890 brought a twofold development. In that
year Bestall visited Monywa on the Chindwin River, and
reported in favour of its being occupied by the Mission. In
the Centenary year Monywa was a separate Circuit with a
European Missionary in residence and showing the largest
membership in the District. The second development was
even more important, for it showed to all that the Christian
religion was one which had as the central force in all its effort
a Christlike love reaching down to the most abject and friend
less of men. In 1890 the first ward of the Asylum for Lepers
was opened. It was not to the credit of the Church at home
that in giving permission for the undertaking of this work
the Committee should add that its consent was given ' on
the clear understanding that such an institution shall not
at any time bring any charge upon the funds of the Society.'
It might well be asked what more Christlike work could be
accepted by the Church as constituting a legitimate charge
upon its funds. A worthier spirit was shown by Mr. Winston,
when he said that ' it was becoming less and less satisfactory
to preach the Gospel to the Natives, and to treat them as if
they had souls and no bodies.' The conditions laid down by
the Committee were, however, accepted, and the institution

1 See p. 270.
25

386 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

was financed by the free contributions of the Burmans, by
grants from the municipality, and by grants in aid from the
Mission to Lepers. The first ward was quickly filled, though
at the outset the greatest difficulty was found in getting the
lepers to enter the asylum. The poor creatures, forsaken by
all men and with no prospect but that of unutterable suffering
which kindly death alone could terminate, could not under
stand that any one could care for such as they, and suspected
a deep-laid scheme to bring them together, so that they might
be put to death by poison. As soon as their suspicions were
removed the wards filled as fast as they could be built. In
1898 this home for hopeless sufferers consisted of five wards
built of wood, and three others more substantially built of
brick. In addition there were within the enclosure a dispen
sary, an orphanage for the untainted children of lepers, and
a chapel where the afflicted people could hear of Him who
touched the leper, and taught to His followers the secret of
this gracious ministry.

One very happy feature of the Burma Mission is to be found
in the ready and generous co-operation of British officers
and others, who, though not of the Methodist Church, knew
Christian work when they saw it, and were ready to further it.
Officers of the Indian Medical Service gave their time and
skill to alleviating, where they could do so, the suffering of the
leper. Others gave generous contributions to the work.
The Churches were made one in the compassion of Christ.
It is disappointing to have to add that after this home had
been well established, Romanist Missionaries built a similar
institution on an adjoining site. They were able to command
large sums of money, and erected wards and other buildings
on a scale with which the Methodists could not compete.
Their discipline, too, differed from ours, and it became possible
for patients to play off one institution against the other, and
to bargain for special terms if they entered. In spite of this
unhappy rivalry the wards in the Methodist home were always
full.

An interesting indication of the sympathy felt for our work
by those who were not of our communion was given in 1897,
when the Mission staff was reduced to two Missionaries.
Officers, grateful for spiritual help received, took up a sub
scription list and presently assured the Chairman that they

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 387

were in a position to guarantee the support of a Missionary
for eight months, and asked him to cable a request that another
man might be sent out at once. The work of the Mission was
respected and appreciated by those best able to judge of its
value.

The Synod of 1896 marked the close of the first decade of
the Mission, and very few fields have been able to report
better results after the first ten years of their history. The
European staff had been strengthened by the addition of the
Revs. T. W. Thomas and A. Woodward, together with the
Rev. C. A. de Silva and a Catechist. Three others presented
themselves for the Catechists' examination, and two young
Burmans came forward as candidates for the Ministry. No
more significant result could have been recorded. Within
the ten years a hundred and twenty-six Burmans had been
enrolled as members, and thirty-three of these had been
baptized in the last year of the decade. Educational work and
the provision of Christian literature had been kept steadily in
view, and that these branches of the work should have appeared
in the earliest days reveals the wisdom of the administration.
Social and philanthropic work were in full swing, the latter
as shown in the work among lepers and the former in the
formation of the White Cross Society, in which the Methodist
Mission joined with others in an attempt to check the licen
tiousness so prevalent in Burma. A new chapel and a girls'
boarding school were in process of erection in Mandalay. The
Mission was thus thoroughly well rooted in the life of the
country, and when Mr. Winston returned to England in the
spring of 1898, he had the deep joy of knowing that he left
behind him a work established in the hearts of those who
through that work had been brought into newness of life in
Christ Jesus. His service had borne abundant fruit, even
within the short space of time in which it had been exercised.

The Rev. A. H. Bestall was appointed Chairman in Mr.
Winston's stead, and the Revs. W. Sherratt and T. G. Phillips
were added to the staff. The services of Mr. Sherratt were
soon lent to the British and Foreign Bible Society in Burma,
and Mr. Bestall was appointed to assist in revising the Burmese
version of the New Testament. Missionary Societies are far
too deeply in debt to the Bible Society to grudge the services
of these men, and whatever they were able to accomplish was

388 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

much to the furtherance of the very work to which they had
been sent ; but such occupations lessened the energy available
for the routine work of the Mission, and a reinforcement of
the staff in view of these appointments would have been
welcomed by the men on the field. Mr. Phillips had been sent
out to take charge of the School for boys in Mandalay. The
number of its students had now risen to one hundred and
seventy-six, and the school was registered as belonging to the
grade of High Schools. The boarding school for girls had also
taken a step in advance. A department for the training of
teachers had given it the status of a Normal School, and it was
recognized as such by the Department of Public Instruction.
Girls passing out of this school in possession of the Government
certificate would be entitled to a grant from the Government
of half the amount of their annual salary as teachers. The
training of agents had not been so successful. The fickleness
of purpose so evident in the character of the Burman led to
a moral instability which could not be tolerated in a Christian
worker.

The year 1901 was one of distress. The staff was depleted
through sickness, Mr. Woodward having for this reason to
return to England, and four young Christian workers died
just when the promise of their co-operation had brought the
hope of increased efficiency to the Missionaries. Of the
Missionaries in Burma at the beginning of the century only
T. G. Phillips and E. J. Bradford remained until the Centenary
year, though most of those sent out were able to spend a
considerable number of years in the work. The following list
includes the names of those who spent more than five years
in the district : T. W. Thomas (1890), A. Woodward (1892),
A. W. Sheldon (1903), W. Vickery (1903), F. D. Winston (1904),
C. H. Chapman (1908), G. E. Mees (1909), H. C. Walters (1910).
Bestall's long continued chairmanship came to an end in 1908,
when he was succeeded by Phillips, but after several years in
English Circuits, Bestall returned to Burma, and in 1923 he
was again superintending the work in whose inception he had
taken so great a part.

Kyaukse, a town of about six thousand inhabitants, was
really the first station outside of Mandalay to be occupied by
the Mission, though for some years it was worked from Manda
lay, the Missionary visiting it once a month. In 1901 it

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 389

became a separate Circuit, the Rev. J. Hoyle (1900) being
appointed to reside there. Here and at Pyawbwe schools
were opened, and agents were set to work among the villages
surrounding these two centres. Pyawbwe is a station of which
more may be heard before long. It stands on the borderland
of the Shan country, and as it is the trading centre of that
country it is a strong strategic position from which the evange
lizing of the Shans may be attempted. The latter are a
people of Indo-Chinese origin. They represent one of those
waves of immigration into the Irrawady region from South-
West China which belong to prehistoric times, and at one
time they were a ruling race of great power. The forty
Shan states were annexed by Great Britain in 1886, and each
is ruled by its own chief under the British flag. Three hundred
years before the Christian era Buddhism was introduced into
their country, but it has not been able to overcome the original
Animism of this people to the extent to which it has done so
among the tribes of Lower Burma. A great stretch of Shan-
land lies between Kindat, an outpost of the Monywa Circuit,
and a hundred and fifty miles from Monywa itself, and
Pyawbwe, a similar outpost of the Kyaukse Circuit seventy
miles from Kyaukse. In each of these Circuits there was in
1913 one European Missionary, and as there is in each centre
a small but increasing Church with schools and other mission
ary agencies, it may easily be imagined that the Missionaries
have little time to spend in these distant out-stations of their
Circuits. The success of the American Baptist Mission in
the Kentung State indicates that the Shans are more ready to
receive the Gospel than the Burmese people have proved to be.
Their moral character has not been so much weakened by
the Buddhism which has so insufficient a sanction at the
back of its ethical system. Pyawbwe itself is described by
Mr. Bradford as ' a sort of Damascus, a huge emporium of the
great caravan trade carried on by the Shan traders.' The
whole of this area lies within the Methodist sphere of operations,
and Missionaries such as Phillips, Vickery, and Bradford have
long urged the occupation of this country in force. Within
its borders the darkness is as that of midnight ; it is unrelieved
by a single ray of light. A school has been opened at Pyawbwe,
and in 1913 a young Burmese Minister, the Rev. Job Hpo
Chaw, was appointed to Kindat in the Upper Chindwin

390 PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD

District. This was the only Burmese Minister who up to that
time had been trained in our Institution at Pakokku, and his
death within the first year of his ministry was a grievous
blow to the hope of the District. In that year the Rev. M. H.
Russell was stationed at Pyawbwe, but on the death of his
colleague, Kindat was left without a Christian worker.

It is probably in the direction of this country of the Shans
that we may expect to see an extension of the Burma Mission,
but in default of an indigenous Ministry, the only way in
which such an extension can be made is by a reinforcement of
the European staff, and the Methodist Church may look for
a large ingathering from among these benighted tribes, if it
will make that reinforcement adequate to the work that
awaits its coming.

In 1906 the Rev. W. H. Findlay visited Upper Burma in his
ofncial capacity as a Secretary of the Society. In his report
he calls attention to the difficulty of obtaining suitable agents
from among a people ' so light-hearted and happy-go-lucky.'
He goes on to say that ' until a Native Ministry is formed in
any particular country, a Mission in that country is still only
in its initial stage, that is a stage in which the European
Missionary is not the supervisor and director of a far-extended
agency but a general factotum in the varied activities of a
Mission station.' There results an impasse for the Burma
Mission. Without a Native Ministry the European, fully
occupied in the central station of his Circuit, can visit the hill
tribes, who seem most likely to accept his message, only with
the greatest difficulty, but that Native Ministry is slow in
coming into being for reasons we have already given. A
peculiarly disappointing effect arising from this situation
is recorded in the report for the year 1912. In that year an
exceptionally promising opening among the Chin tribes
could not be accepted for want of a Missionary who could be
sent. The disappointment was all the more grievous because
every year that passes makes it more difficult to win these
people for Christ. For hundreds of years they were the
formidable foes of the Burmese, and this prevented the spread
of Buddhism among them. Compelled now by the British
to keep the peace they have begun to yield to the persuasions
of Buddhist teachers, and if their Animism be replaced by
Buddhism, their conversion to Christianity will be greatly

PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD 391

retarded. The door was flung open, but was not likely to
remain open. The Christian Church was unable to enter.
It is the common tragedy of the Mission Field. The training
institution is situated in Pakokku, but in the Centenary year
only two students were taking the course prescribed. The
numerical statistics for that year may here be given :

Chapels and other places for preaching . . . . 23

European Missionaries . . . . . . . . 12

Burmese Minister . . . . . . . . . . i

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Local preachers . . . . . . . . . . 13

Church members . . . . . . . . . . 525

Members on probation . . . . . . . . 60

Children in day schools . . . . . . . . 1,294

Such numbers do not reveal a Church of any great dimensions,
but the good seed of the Kingdom has been faithfully sown,
and the smallest of all seeds may grow into a great tree which
becomes the resting-place for the birds of the air, and many
thousands of Burmans, Shans, and Chins, will one day find
their spiritual home in Christ.

MASS MOVEMENTS

The Baptisms at Ongole — Outstanding Features of the Movement —
A Misnomer — Panchama Conditions — The Protest of William Goudie —
Conversion and Edification — The Movement in Tiruvallur — In
Haidarabad — In Bengal — A Suggested Policy — Community Move
ments in Dharapuram and Mysore.

THE division of the Hindu community into strictly denned
social groups and the solidarity characteristic of these made it
inevitable that movements towards the Christian Church were
from the first expected to be en masse. Wesleyan Missionaries
began to look for such movements long before there was any
real sign of their appearance in the areas within which they
were at work. Men of sanguine or over-eager temperament
hailed every accession of more than two or three as ' the
beginning of a mass movement.' Their hopes were stimulated
by accessions which took place in other areas more or less
contiguous to their own, and they looked forward to the time
when, like their happy fellow Missionaries in Tinnevelly and
Travancore, they too would reap an overflowing harvest.
They had to learn that to a great extent such movements
depended upon social conditions peculiar to the territories
concerned, and many years were to pass before the Methodists
struck the reef out of which the true gold of the kingdom of
heaven might be quarried, refined, and brought into the
treasure-house of the King.

In 1879 all Missionary Societies in South India were stirred
by the news that Missionaries of the American Baptist Telugu
Missionary Society working at Ongole had baptized no less
than three thousand five hundred persons in three days. This
was generally considered a perilous step to have taken, unless
the Missionaries were assured that they would be able to
instruct the crowds thus admitted into the Church. Since

392

MASS MOVEMENTS

393

that time, though so large a number has never been received
by Wesleyan Missionaries at one time, there have been such
considerable accessions of strictly defined communities in
Madras, Haidarabad, and the Negapatam District, that
Methodists too have had the joy of admitting great companies
of men, women, and children into the Church ; and though
the phrase ' Mass Movement ' may even now seem somewhat
extravagant when used of Methodists, yet interpreting it as
' accessions by communities/ we may well consider the motives
and the issues of such movements. They have already
greatly affected the Christian Church in India, and are likely
to do so to a greater extent in the near future.

Their first outstanding feature is that they occur in the
lowest of the social grades of Hindu society, and that the
condition of those belonging to it is one of almost inde
scribable degradation. The second is that this most unpro
mising ' material ' is found within an incredibly short time to
' adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.' No
evidence as to the inherent power of the Christian faith to
uplift mankind is more convincing than that which is to be
found in the rise of the Panchamas to worthy manhood
through the simplicity of a child-like obedience to the ' law
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.' There is a third general
observation to be made before we pass to a detailed examina
tion of such movements in the several Districts where they
have taken place, and it is this, that such fruitage of the
Methodist husbandry, so far from relieving the Church of
obligation, rather increases it. Missionaries have gathered
this harvest in fear and trembling. They know only too well
the peril of admitting a crude mass of paganism into the
Christian Church. They have learned by sad experience that
the provision made by the Church at home for the teaching
and training of its children is limited and often insufficient.
They therefore hesitate in accepting those who come to them
for baptism. In such Districts as the Haidarabad State, and
to a less extent in the Tiruvallur Circuit, the number of
adherents depends on the number of harvesters sent into
the field by the home Churches. This implies a greatly
increased financial provision, and the question should be
faced whether that provision may reasonably be expected.
To talk glibly of the less costly agency to be found in the

394 MASS MOVEMENTS

indigenous Ministry is mere obscurantism. It puts out of
sight the whole question of training — the provision of both
men and buildings for the village schools which may be
increased by the thousand, the even more necessary provision
of boarding schools, of teachers' seminaries, of evangelists'
training schools, and of theological institutions. Each of
these is an essential link in the chain, and all must be provided
to cover the needs of the forty thousand people in the
Haidarabad State alone before the provision can be considered
adequate. The question before the Church is one which we
have raised already in the preparation of these records, but
we raise it again : ' Is the Methodist Church prepared to
receive the answer to its prayer ? '

In the Centenary year the Christian community attached
to the Methodist Church in South India, including those who
were baptized adherents but had not been admitted into the
inner circle of the Christian fellowship, numbered twenty-eight
thousand three hundred persons, and was distributed over the
several Districts as follows : Madras, five thousand three hun
dred ; Negapatam, two thousand three hundred ; Haidarabad,
seventeen thousand ; and Mysore, three thousand seven
hundred. If, however, this total is compared with the popula
tion within the areas in which it is found, the phrase ' Mass
Movement ' is something of a misnomer and may be misleading.
For while we rejoice that so many in our own Missions, and
still more in those of other Churches, have entered the Christian
fold, the mass of Hinduism, properly so called, remains almost
untouched.

The number of Brahmans and of the other three classes of
caste Hindus who have accepted Christ as their Lord, and
confessed Him in baptism, is all but a negligible quantity.
By far the great majority of those who have entered the
Christian Church are ' Outcastes.' They do not belong to
those who represent the learning, the wealth, or the religious
influence of the Hindus. There is no reason for allowing this
fact to qualify our joy that so many have entered into Christian
fellowship. It is exceedingly probable that the permeation of
the social fabric by Christianity will work as it did in the
Roman Empire, from the lowest to the highest, from the slave
to the emperor. But in view of the facts before us a better
name for the movement, now gathering momentum every

MASS MOVEMENTS 395

year, would be that of ' Community Movement,' inasmuch
as it is found almost entirely within a certain class of the
Hindu community. Sometimes it is spoken of as ' the Pariah
Movement ' ; but this again is open to objection. The
word ' Pariah ' has acquired a connotation of contempt born
from the feeling and attitude of those who regarded all but
the members of the four recognized classes of Hindu society
as ' untouchables ' — the filth and offscouring of the world.
For this reason the word ' Panchama ' — or the fifth class — has
been suggested as a less opprobrious name, and it has the
further advantage of covering the whole community other
than that of ' Caste Hindus.' Since, even within the class we
are now considering, there are social grades which are often
punctiliously observed, the word Panchama has much in its
favour, and we shall use it as covering the large number,
amounting to many millions, of those who have no social
standing, and — but for the impartiality of British administra
tion — very little in the way of legal privilege, within the pale
of Hinduism. Who are these people ? How have they
arrived at their present social position ?

These questions are not easily answered. It is now generally
accepted that they are not, as was at first supposed, the
aborigines of South India reduced to a condition of servitude
by Dravidian invaders. Ethnologists are fairly agreed that
racially they possess the characteristics of all Dravidians, but
how they came to be excluded from the social privileges of
classes belonging to their own race remains an enigma which
is yet to be solved. That exclusion was final and equally
fatal. The Panchama, as caste hardened into the inexorable
system which it now is, found himself completely shut out
from all intercourse with the higher classes, and every hope
that he might some day be admitted to something like intimate
association was absolutely cut off. It was fatal, because with
the position of servitude thus forced upon him there went the
inevitable degradation that goes with a servile condition.
No light was given him from those to whom had come a
measure of illumination, and the Panchama became the
victim of ignorance, superstition, and vice. Lower and lower
he sank, until by comparison, the life of the animal seemed
almost preferable to his own. Indecency and obscenity
ceased to trouble him. The filthy hovels in which he herded

396 MASS MOVEMENTS

with his kind were veritable homes of beastliness. The reader
must set himself to imagine, with no further assistance, the
moral and intellectual condition of men who for many gener
ations knew of no other conditions of life. Socially the Pan-
chama was a slave, and in Hindu law the only question open to
consideration was whether he was so by birth or by purchase.
He was a labourer in fields that were not his own, and entirely
at the disposal of his master or owner. A bare subsistence
was all that was allowed in return for his labour. A day's
pay was seldom more than a day's food. Should he be com
pelled to find a sum of money for any domestic purpose, such
as a marriage in his house, his only means of obtaining it was
by borrowing from some wealthy landowner, at a rate of interest
which he could never hope to meet in cash, and he might
easily find himself and his children bound to serve his creditor
for the whole term of their lives. The fetters which bound
him became more firmly riveted with every year he lived.
Naturally his creditor had no desire to deliver him from this
bondage. His labour was far too valuable to his master for
the latter to countenance either its coming to a close, or its
being carried on under conditions which left him with a
smaller profit ; and when the Missionary appeared on the
scene preaching to such men the Gospel of freedom and hope,
and becoming their champion against oppression and fraud,
it inevitably followed that the over-lord resented the coming of
the Missionary and did his utmost to thwart his purpose.
Every attempt to enlighten or to inspire the hapless victims
of human greed and selfishness was met with the most deter
mined opposition.

But into the midst of this mass of degraded and hopeless
life came the Missionary with the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
proclaiming God as the Father of all men, and a real brother
hood as the bond between man and man. In his work in the
villages around Tiruvallur, William Goudie speedily found
himself in contact with both victim and oppressor. He took
up the cause of the oppressed, and inspired others to do the
same. Representations of the civil disabilities of the Pan-
chamas appeared in the press, the attention of the Government
of Madras was drawn to the matter, and Goudie received the
thanks of the Governor of Madras in Council for the spirit and
energy with which he advocated the rights of these people

MASS MOVEMENTS 397

against their caste masters. But Goudie's aim was far beyond
that of securing civil rights for the Panchamas by means of
legislation. That was so much to the good, but he sought
something better still. To quote his own words :

The Government strikes off the old shackles, but the Gospel must
give a new and larger life. The real work of emancipation must rest
with the missionaries. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. In
order to hold his own, and take his place as a free man among freemen,
the Pariah must be remade, and it is only the grace of God that will
do that for him. Give him land and bullocks, and he will mortgage
them, and have them sold by auction in less than five years. Give
him freedom, and take him under the care and instruction of the
Christian Church, and he will rise step by step to a place of honour and
strength.

Yet what probability was there that the mind sinking lower
and lower in its power to apprehend anything beyond the
mere facts of physical existence, and continuing in this declen
sion for centuries, could ever grasp the mere elements of
reflection and self-determination involved in repentance and
faith, or conceive of ' the living God,' with a heart touched
with the feeling of our infirmities ? The first sermons to
such persons must have been far beyond their comprehension.
They must indeed have ' heard their one hope with an empty
wonder.' But the human heart, however degraded, always
responds to love, and it was the love of the man, and not his
teaching, that quickened a new life within the dark mind and
still darker heart. They listened to the pleadings of love.
They began to trust the man who could thus care for them.
They gave their allegiance first to him, and then to the Lord
in whose name he had come into their life. Conversions
among the Panchamas began to be recorded.

Now the word ' Conversion ' is music in the Methodist's
ear. To him it marks the close of an effort to bring the sinner
to Christ, and too often he thinks that he himself has nothing
more to do for the man that has come within the embracing
arms of Love Divine. Even in England such a view of a con
vert is a mistaken view, but in India the work of the Church
at that stage, so far from being ended, is only beginning.
Here we may well quote words written with a glowing pen,
which alas ! will write no more. The Rev. W. H. Findlay

398 MASS MOVEMENTS

in an able article contributed to Work and Workers in 1892,
says :

Imagine Christians who have an inherited tendency to idolatry
and ritual as strong as the inherited craving for drink which afflicts
some poor creatures in England ; who have no sense of the Sabbath,
or anything else that we count sacred ; to whom obscenity in speech
and act and thought is as commonplace as eating and drinking ; who
scarcely seem capable of shame for anything that we reckon sin ; whose
knowledge of the world scarcely extends beyond their own little group
of huts, and the limbs of their mental and spiritual being alike are
shrivelled from long disuse. Imagine such Christians, I say, not
heathens. Their claim to the name of ' Christian ' consists in their
willingness to believe, in such measure as they can understand, what
they are taught of Christ and His truth, and their claim to member
ship in our Societies is in their ' desire to flee from the wrath to come,'
and their readiness to walk, with such steps as they can, in the new
way. This is a picture of thousands and myriads of those who form
the ' numerical increases ' over which the Church at home rejoices.

And again in the same article :

The seeds of infection in Hinduism are more active, virulent, and
contagious than those that lingered in the dying paganism of Rome.
The population of India is greater and more massed and welded together
than were the populations of that Empire, and the transformation
from heathen to Christian will be effected in India in less than half the
time that separated Christ from Constantine. When the rush and
whelm of mass-accessions begin, what is to save the Indian Church that
is to be from such grievous corruption as still pollutes the Greek and
Roman communions ?

Obviously the only safeguard is to be found in the careful
instruction and pastoral care of the earlier accessions, so that
when the real ' mass movement ' comes, it may find a body of
Christian truth and experience that will be able to withstand
its deteriorating influence. Many have for this reason coun
selled caution in admitting whole villages or communities to
the Church, and their fears are not unreasonable. But they
need not be deterrent, provided that the Christian Church
will put forth pastors and teachers who may build up into
Christian manhood and womanhood those who are coming in
crowds to claim admission into the fellowship of believers.

The first real indication of a community movement was
given in 1881, when the Rev. G. M. Cobban baptized thirty-
eight persons belonging to a village in his Circuit — Madras

MASS MOVEMENTS 399

North. When the Rev. William Goudie took up his residence
in Tiruvallur, many others came forward to be admitted into
the Christian fellowship. The membership in the Tiruvallur
Circuit rose from fifty-three in 1889 to three hundred and
thirty-two in 1899 and to seven hundred and eighty in 1913,
with a large number of others who were kept on probation.
The villages from which they came were small, consisting of a
Parcheri attached to the village proper in which people belong
ing to the higher classes resided. The work of the evangelists
in these Parcheris was made the more difficult because their
Catechumens were not found in any great number at one
place, and as the light broke into villages in many cases far
removed from the central station of the Circuit, the labour and
the time involved in visiting the groups of inquirers were often
very great. This difficulty could only be met by multiplying
the number of Christian teachers and evangelists, and the
training of a Christian agency was suddenly seen to be the
urgent necessity which indeed it had been from the first.

The course of events which followed, and the different
means adopted for the instruction of converts, have been
recorded in another chapter of this History, and the story need
not be repeated. Education, industry, and medical work
were the chief features of the Missionary effort to lift up from
the ' horrible pit ' those who had never known the wider
outlook and the ' ampler air ' of life. When William Goudie
visited his former Circuit as Secretary in 1920, he reported
that the rate of numerical increase had lessened, but the
Church life of the Christian community had developed and
deepened in every phase. Especially notable was the part
played by the laity of the Church, and the contrast between
the self-respecting and efficient officers of the Church, and that
which they had been when Goudie first came to share their
life, could scarcely be described. In the course of his visit
Goudie attended the Quarterly Meeting of the southern section
of the Tiruvallur Circuit, and this is what he says :

As I sat and listened to the brethren conducting the business of
that Quarterly Meeting, and doing it in a way that would have been
a credit to an English Circuit, it was difficult to choose between the
Minister and the Laymen for devotion and ability. My thoughts went
back to the time when the first stone of this structure had not been
laid, and my heart cried out, ' What hath God wrought ! '

400 MASS MOVEMENTS

In the same report of an official visit, Goudie refers to a
development of great significance for the Church of the future.

As in the early Church the city guilds gave the first suggestion
of constitution, so in India the village Panchayat has provided us with
a working pattern, and is being found of great value in constituting a
Church with Elders from the earliest possible time. Put responsibility
on the laymen of the Church, and they rise to it. Put it at the begin
ning, and it is a challenge to all that is best in them, and even makes
them new men.

The second District to record a ' community movement '
was Haidarabad. In 1885 the first converts from among the
Malas were baptized, and until 1903, when a similar movement
among the Madigas commenced, the accessions to the Church
were almost entirely from this sub-section of the Panchama
class. So great has been the number of those who have
accepted Christ as their Lord and Master, that in 1920 the
baptized community in this District numbered forty thousand,
considerably more than half the population of the villages.
In this District, more than in others, the phrase ' Mass Move
ment ' may therefore be correctly used. The Telugu-speaking
Panchamas have been described as ' more primitive, docile,
and simple ' than those found in the Tamil Districts of South
India, but they resemble the latter in social degradation, in
ignorance, and in superstition, as well as the dirt and squalor
of their surroundings. The Malas are as a section of the
community peculiarly distinct from all other groups. Caste
erects its insuperable barrier between them and the Sudras,
the class next above theirs, but deep-seated traditional pre
judices completely cut them off from the Madigas, a lower
section of the Panchama community. They have no properly
defined creed or system of religious observance, for the non
descript rites which make up their religion in practice are not
enforced by any organized priesthood ; nor do they possess
among themselves any special religious sanction, except such
as tradition may supply. Their rites are nothing more than a
mass of grotesque and degrading ceremonies, observed mostly
in connexion with the celebration of marriages, or in times
when pestilence or famine threatens death. There was there
fore no formulated system of thought of which the mind needed
to be dispossessed before the Christian Gospel could make an

MASS MOVEMENTS 401

effective appeal. In this particular, the situation before the
Missionaries more nearly approximates to that found in
Africa than in the other Districts of India where Methodist
Missionaries have been at work.

It must not, however, be assumed that the Mala had nothing
to surrender when he decided to follow Christ. Family ties
are close and binding, and in accepting baptism the Mala cut
himself off from all his family connexions. Until the movement
became more general, he would find it difficult to arrange mar
riages for his sons and daughters. The women of his household
clung to the old customs with extraordinary tenacity, and
strongly objected to any change, while in becoming a Christian
he would inevitably incur the cruel persecution which his
Muhammadan or Hindu over-lords practised upon those who
deprived them of the subservience they had so selfishly
exploited in these tillers of the soil. There is also to be con
sidered the demand which their new faith would make upon
them in the sphere of morality. The licence of their former life
would be replaced by an exacting rule of conduct, and after
centuries of a life in which moral law had for them no existence,
the bonds which were now to bind them to Christ might well
seem to be fetters which galled the hitherto unbridled desires.
What, then, were the motives which acted within the con
sciousness of these people to bring about so widespread an
acceptance of the Christian rule of life ? Missionaries offered
no advantages in the form of material wealth, nor was any
attempt made to persuade them to abandon the arduous and
precarious occupation of cultivating fields which were so
repeatedly reduced to sterility. How came it about that a
change so rapid, and so completely a reversal of all their past,
took place ? The answer would seem to be twofold, but its
two terms are so closely related that they may be reduced to
one. The Mala saw that there had come into his life, in some
way which to him must have been incomprehensible, a spirit
of compassion which did not hesitate to enter the squalid
hovel or to lay healing hands upon his body all foul with
disease. A new thing came into his experience when he found
that some one cared what he might be, and that with that
love there went a power to uplift and to dignify his life.
Probably the older men thought that little advantage would
come to them, but the instinct of fatherhood made them

402 MASS MOVEMENTS

desire that their children should be set free from the fetters
which had bound them to conditions which were degrading.
Christianity was the way out of the house of bondage. It
offered them a ' promised land ' of opportunity to rise above
the dirt and degradation of their former life. Love meant
uplifting, and they surrendered to love. There is nothing in
such a motive for which the Missionary need apologize. If it
indicates a balancing of advantages against disadvantages,
such a consideration was natural, and where the sense of sin
could scarcely be said to exist, and the mind was utterly
incapable of either logic or philosophy, there was no other
motive likely to lead them to take action. Was it after all
so unworthy a motive ? 'God loves me, and I may by accept
ing His love enter into fullness of life ' — such a proposition is
the governing motive of every Christian. But even if to
-the student of Christian ethics such a motive seems insufficient,
it was only the initial consideration and was soon replaced by
one greater still. By yielding to it the Mala brought himself
within the rays of light which stream from Him who is both
the light and the life of men. Soon the all but blinded eyes
were opened, and were held not by a prospect of advantage
for the man or for his children, but by the glowing centre of the
light that had given to his life a new radiance. Song or sermon
might be the vehicle of this spiritual vibration, but the issue
was that the vision of Christ was given him coming by way of
the Gospel story — related or dramatized, what matter ? —
and that beauty won his ultimate allegiance. Grosser con
siderations disappeared. The Mala gave himself to Christ.

The movement gathered an extraordinary momentum,
which so far from being spent in a few years is still on the
increase. Figures given by Mr. Pratt in 1902, which eliminate
all returns from Churches in the town and relate solely to
village communities, show that

In 1885 there were forty Christians in three villages.

In 1890 there were seven hundred and eighty in thirty-five.

In 1895 there were three thousand four hundred and sixty-
nine in a hundred and five.

In 1900 there were six thousand seven hundred and fifty-
four in two hundred and two.

When Mr. Goudie visited this District in 1920, there were
forty thousand baptized persons in the villages occupied by

MASS MOVEMENTS 403

Methodist Agents. Within the thirty-five years covered by
Mr. Goudie's survey, an entirely new field had been opened
and cultivated with this result. As we have described else
where, the Madigas had followed the Malas into the Church,
and in 1920 more than six thousand of the former had been
baptized. Of the social position of the Madigas and of the
circumstances attending their admission into Church fellowship
we have written elsewhere,1 and we need not do more than
indicate the prospect of still more remarkable numerical
increases in the years to come.

Numbers form the first and most easily recorded criterion of
the work of the Church. There are higher tests ; more exact
ing, for they are found in the domain of character ; more
subtle, for they belong to the sphere of spiritual life. Judged
by these there is every reason to believe that the grace and
power of God are to be seen in the Church that is arising in the
Haidarabad District. The triumphs of grace that are to
be found in those who are the ' outcastes and the outcasts '
of Hinduism are the same as those to be found among the
most highly placed Christians of any land, and if the fruits of
the Spirit are the ultimate test of the Christian Church, then
the harvest which is being gathered in this field is the fruit of
God's husbandry, and the Church stands to the glory of His
Name.

The Santals form a distinct unit among the many popula
tions of India. They inhabit a district in Lower Bengal lying
north-west of Calcutta, and covering an area of five thousand
square miles. In 1881 the population within this area was
given as one and a half millions, and of these more than half
a million were Santals, but the census of 1911 showed a Santal
population of two millions, so that the rate of increase is a
high one. They speak a language which belongs neither to the
Aryan type nor to the Dravidian. It is generally held to
indicate a connexion with the Kolarians — a tribe which in
prehistoric days invaded India from the north-east. These
people were split up into fragments by the thrust of the great
Dravidian movement which followed, and detached sections
of Kolarians were left in the jungles of Bengal, while the

1 See p. 341

404 MASS MOVEMENTS

Dravidians pushed on to the south. The most considerable
of these sections was the Santal.

Their religion is a form of Totemism, and exhibits the
familiar features of that system in superstition and licentious
ness. They are not therefore to be classed among the ' Out-
castes ' of Southern India, though their conditions of life
approximate to those of the latter. In 1856 an insurrection
against the Government took place among this tribe. It
was suppressed with fearful carnage, but was followed by a
readjustment in administration which has contented the people.

The chief Mission centres in this District are Bankura and
Sarenga, and at no great distance is the important railway
centre of Raniganj. The triangle formed by connecting these
three towns is one of increasing importance from the industrial
point of view. Coal mines and iron works have invaded the
rice fields, and draw thousands of labourers from the simplicity
of village life and agricultural pursuits into the vortex of
mechanical industries. Such a change is certain to affect the
mass of the people in North India, just as it did the people of
England in the nineteenth century, and the Methodist Church
has in the providence of God found itself placed in the very
centre of the whole industrial movement. Whether it is to
claim that movement for Christ is a question which that
Church in England must face, but if the spirit which dwelt in our
fathers and gave them their unique influence in Yorkshire and
Lancashire dwells in that Church to-day, there is no doubt as to
what that answer will be. This is, however, a digression, and
we must return to the recording of the steps which led up to
the Methodist occupation of this District.

We have seen that Hodson and Percival were attracted
to Bankura, and that forty years after their first visit to that
town a Catechist was sent there in 1871, the humble represen
tative of the Methodist Church. Eight years after the first
European Missionary, the Rev. J. R. Broadhead, was appointed
to Bankura. There were at that time only five members of
society in the Circuit, and with the exception of a school
for girls no educational work had been attempted. To-day
Bankura is the centre of a large and increasing Christian
community and has one of the finest and most successful
Mission colleges to be found in North India.

The Broadheads occupied a hired house, for there was then

MASS MOVEMENTS 405

no Mission property in the town, and their nearest fellow-
worker was a Catechist stationed at Bishenpur, some twenty
miles to the south. The first mention of the Santals occurs
in the report for the year 1883, where the hope is expressed that
it might become possible to begin work among these people
so incurably shy that access to them was most difficult. A
further difficulty was found in this, that they did not speak
Bengali, and the Missionaries did not speak Santali. The
means of intercommunication seemed very remote. But
' Love bridges the distance/ and the Santals have been ' made,
nigh in the blood of Christ.' The purchase of a site for a
Mission bungalow and girls' boarding school was of importance,
since Mr. Broadhead was able to place on the same site a
boarding school for Santali boys. This was the first effective
contact established with the Santals. In 1887 Mr. Broadhead
was on furlough, and Mr. G. W. Olver was appointed to take
his place at Bankura. He at once decided to make a sustained
effort to reach the Santals. For many months he lived in
tents, moving from one locality to another, where he hoped
to get into touch with the people he sought, and he finally
decided to make Sarenga the centre of operations on their
behalf. About this time another step of great importance to
our work was taken. The C.M.S. had maintained at Bankura
for many years one of their Catechists. They had acquired
a good deal of property, and had established schools for both
boys and girls. As that Society now decided to withdraw
from the district, their property was purchased, and the
Methodist Church, thus left the sole Missionary agency in the
neighbourhood, became responsible for the evangelization of
the whole area. The first baptisms of Santals at Sarenga
took place in 1891, and they marked the beginning of a com
munity movement which may be as extensive as the area
within which this people is to be found. More land was
purchased at Sarenga for the erection of houses for workers
among them, and it was also hoped to found in time a Christian
settlement where those who were reclaimed from their wild
life in the jungles might be persuaded to live. Several families
were thus brought within easier reach of Christian influence.
Their simple houses were soon erected, and they became
tenants of the Mission. Unfortunately the rent they paid
was not sufficient to keep their houses in repair, and the people

4o6 MASS MOVEMENTS

became more or less dependent on the Mission. Their children
were sent to school, but a small sum was paid every month
to their parents by way of compensation for the loss of their
children's work in the fields. The situation which evolved was
demoralizing, and in after days it was found necessary to set
up quite a different scheme of management as far as this
settlement was concerned.

Gradually the number of Santal converts increased, and in
1903 the Rev. G. E. Woodford was able to report that the
Methodist Church had obtained a foothold in six villages,
and that the number of Church members was two hundred.
Some of these converts were men of independent means and
had land of their own. They reproduced the spirit of the
early Church in that some of them gave portions of their land
to poorer brethren that they might cultivate them and support
themselves. The year 1905 brought the large number of a
hundred and forty-three baptisms among the Santals, and the
movement was now clear to every one who took the trouble to
consider it. In Bankura, too, the Chamars began to join the
Church in considerable numbers. In a village near Madhupur,
inhabited by a class resembling the Santals, but observing a
rigid distinction, almost the entire population accepted Christ
as their Lord and Master. When the Centenary year arrived,
in Sarenga, Bishenpur, and Madhupur — the three chief centres
of the Santal Mission — the Christian community numbered
eight hundred and forty, while in Bankura there were five
hundred and thirty-seven more. Such accessions are as yet
far from deserving the name of ' a mass movement/ but they
belong distinctly to the type of community movement, and if
wisely directed, and above all if due regard be paid to the
training of workers from among the Santals themselves, the
Church will one day rejoice in witnessing a whole people
turning to the Lord.

It is scarcely to be wondered at that the large accessions
to the Church from among the Malas of Haidarabad, and
similar accessions from the Pariahs of Madras, the Santals of
Bengal, and the Doms of Benares, should raise the question
whether the Methodist Church should or should not concentrate
on the depressed classes in India to the exclusion of all attempts
to reach the higher classes. At the Bradford Conference of
1897 Pratt and Goudie found themselves taking furlough at the

MASS MOVEMENTS 407

same time, and they, with Cobban, determined to press the
Conference to decide in favour of this limitation to a field so
boundless that it could scarcely be called a ' limitation.'
Other interests at the Conference intervened, and they were
unable to carry out their intention, but in the course of the
year which followed the suggestion was brought before the
Committee. It was not adopted, and subsequent events
have shown that it would have been an error in policy if it
had been. For the human family is one, and any attempt to
limit the service of the Church to one section of it has its
unhappy reactions upon the very class which it seeks to favour,
to say nothing of the peril of giving up that ' undistinguishing
regard ' which is the character of the love Divine, and of limiting
an interest and service which should embrace the whole world
of human life. There is much to be said in favour of concentra
tion and of specializing in many departments of work, but the
motive at the back of this notable triumvirate was the apparent
hopelessness of securing financial aid adequate to the boundless
opportunity with which they were confronted. They took up
this position, not because they were opposed to educational
work as such — there have been few greater advocates of that
work than the three men before us — but simply out of despair of
seeing the Church rise to the point of making adequate provision
for both. In view of this failure they cast about for other
means of gathering their harvest, and this seemed the only
way. But it was not in every District that these movements
among the depressed classes were taking place, and if the
Church had decided to limit its service in the direction suggested
other Districts would have had their operations seriously
curtailed, and the whole range and character of their influence
diminished, with no prospect of a mass movement among the
Panchamas to serve as compensation. But a still more serious
consequence, disastrous to the very Church which they aimed
at creating from among the outcaste population, was this —
that by abandoning educational work they would lose the
opportunity of providing for the need of the Christian com
munity. The second generation of Panchama converts would
not come under the same disqualifications as their parents.
The fullest educational advantages would have been required
for the youth of the Church, and to leave them to secure these
in Government schools and colleges, where religious neutrality

408 MASS MOVEMENTS

could scarcely be distinguished from religious indifference
would have been to throw away what had been so hardly
gained, and to have subjected the flower and promise of the
Church to insidious and fatal peril. It is instructive in this
connexion to note that when Mr. Goudie visited Ikkadu in
1920 he says in his report :

At the meeting of Old Boys and Girls assembled to welcome us
a strong request was made for the teaching of English in boarding
schools, and there is strong reason for introducing the subject. Boys—
and the same is true of girls-who are able to go beyond the grade of
the elementary schools find themselves hampered for want of English
and an English class might wisely be formed, and those scholars ad
mitted to it who are doing sufficiently well in other subjects to warrant
the experiment.

There was yet another disaster, and one of incalculable
dimensions, involved ; but of this we shall let Mr. Pratt himself
speak :

About four years ago we banished English from all our schools
with the exception of those in Secunderabad. This step was entirely
right in my judgement, and has been amply justified by results ; but

t carries with it this disadvantage— that it reduces our recruiting-
ground for the Native Ministry. As things are now the knowledge of

inglish is all but essential to a man designated for the Ministry We
expected that the boys' home, to which most of the promising sons of
Catechists and Native Ministers are sent, would supply us with candi
dates for the Ministry, but we have been disappointed.

Here Mr. Pratt touches upon one feature of educational work
which is often ignored. It is that through this means the
hopes to receive its instructed Ministers with minds
trained by the disciplines of school and college, and with a
consecration all the more complete because they have been led
to surrender more in the way of affluence and social position.
The sequel to the facts mentioned by Mr. Pratt is to be found
in the return of the District to its abandoned work of higher
education. The high school at Chadarghat, given up under
the financial stress caused by the Missionary Controversy,
was taken up again in Secunderabad, with special provision
for Christian youths in the form of a hostel.

The dilemma in which Indian Missionaries found themselves
by reason of mass movements is to be resolved by the Church's
acceptance of the increased responsibility entailed by success,

MASS MOVEMENTS 409

and by its generous provision for the work entailed by God's
answer to its many prayers that He would indeed open the
windows of heaven and pour down such a blessing that there
would be no room to contain it. As to the respective claims
of different departments of the one undivided and indivisible
work of the Church, the ancient saying is entirely apposite :
' This ought ye to have done and not leave the other undone.'
Up to the coming of the Centenary year community move
ments in other Districts of India had not become sufficiently
prominent to call for notice in this chapter. Of hopeful
beginnings in the Negapatam and the Mysore Districts we
have written elsewhere.

SUPPLEMENT
THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE

THE story of the work of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in
India has been told in the preceding chapters as a series of
geographical expansions. The chapters bear the names of
Districts in the south and in the north. Thus we have been
enabled to watch a Christian Mission ' winning its widening
way,' but at the same time we have been reminded again and
again that something more has been happening than a mere
extension in space or an increase in the members of a religious
community. The end of all missionary endeavour ought to
be the establishment of a Native Church, and we have to judge
of the success achieved by the progress which has been made
towards the goal. This is the earthly measure which we must
apply to the work of our Society in India.

In India the growth of the Church has been retarded especi
ally by the characteristic Hindu institution — Caste. This
has manifested its influence in two ways. The number of
converts in areas where work has been carried on among the
higher castes has been small. In the beginning the Missionary
and his family of necessity made up the whole Christian con
gregation in a station ; but as the years passed converts were
gathered in one by one, and a little Christian community was
formed. Some of these, as we have seen, belonged to the
highest caste ; they were Brahmans by birth, inheriting the
privileges of learning and priestly rule. After Christian
boarding schools, colleges, and training institutions had been
established, young men and women and the children of converts
received a Christian education, and many of them passed into
the ranks of missionary service. The small Christian com
munity has thus been made to yield a ministry of teachers,
evangelists, and pastors far beyond its own power to support.
Numbers are not negligible in the organization and development

410

THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 411

of a Church ; for the fullness of its life there must be magnitude
as well as intensity. Until the Christian community in some
of our Districts greatly increases in size, it must remain depen
dent upon a Foreign Church for many of its activities. It
cannot educate its own children, nor train youth for pastoral
service, nor preach the Gospel widely among the millions who
have not yet felt its appeal or understood its message. The
slowness in the development of the Indian Church is due to
the slowness of the process of conversion.

This is not to say that Missionaries have been unfaithful
or that methods have been wrong. A praeparatio evangelica
of a people may be necessary before there can be a turning of
many individuals towards Christ. In the preceding chapters
results have been recorded which do not show in the member
ship rolls of Churches or the statistics of adult conversions.
There is such a thing as the gradual penetration of a people's
thought by Christian ideals — often an unrecognized and
unacknowledged process. There are two outstanding examples
of this in modern India. One is that already in a notable
degree the educated Hindu who believes in God at all tends to
think of Him as we know Him through the words and deeds of
Jesus of Nazareth. The impersonal Absolute, the fearsome
Siva and erotic Krishna, are yielding ground to ' the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.' The second proof is in the
growing popular conviction that true religion has something to
do with the neighbourly service of our fellow men. There has
been an extraordinary change of attitude towards the despised
and lowly. National Congresses and Legislative Councils
now vie with Christian Missions in their proposals for the
uplift of the Pariah and the general improvement of social
conditions. But such movements as these have not yet
resulted among Caste Hindus in a multitude of professing
Christians ; they have not provided in sufficient quantity
the human materials for an Indian Church. If, therefore, the
development of an Indian Church tarries, and the Foreign
Mission is more in evidence than a Native Church, the reason
is not that the foreign Missionary asserts himself unduly or
is loth to abdicate control, but rather that the Christian com
munity is still small and straitened in its resources.

Caste has demonstrated its power in another way. It is
also the explanation of the second fact that where many

4I2 THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE

converts have been won, they have belonged chiefly to the poor
and depressed classes. Ten years ago it was estimated that
Christians of the Wesleyan Methodist denomination in India
numbered about 40,000 ; at the time of writing the number
must be well over 60,000 — an increase in a decade of more than
fifty per cent. But this large and rapid accession has come
chiefly through the mass movements among the Outcastes
of the Haidarabad State and the Madras Presidency. The
social status of the majority of the converts is a factor in the
development of the Church. The Missionary cannot avoid
being ' father and mother ' to a Christian community of Out-
caste origin in the early stages of the work. His converts
lean upon him for instruction and guidance, for succour
and discipline. Dependency for a time cannot be avoided.

But we ought not to acquiesce in the indefinite prolongation
of this period in the life of the community ; it ought to be no
more than a passing phase. From the first there should be
brought into operation a system of Christian nurture or educa
tion through village school and church, boarding school and
seminary, high school and college, which will develop with the
greatest possible rapidity the powers latent in the new com
munity — once despised, now beloved ; once enslaved, now set
free. The system should seek out and discover the most
gifted among the young and train and equip them for leader
ship. The story of the Haidarabad Mission, with its wide
spread and carefully supervised system of education in the
villages, its boarding schools for boys and girls at each head
quarters, its great training institutions at Medak, with the
high school in Secunderabad and the United Theological
College in Bangalore for the preparation of the ordained
Ministers, is a fine illustration of what we mean. The progress
already made by the people in the Haidarabad District is an
inspiring proof of what can be accomplished within a short
time. Among a people who a few years ago were illiterate
and degraded, men and women have been raised up who are
apt to teach and worthy to bear rule. An efficient educational
system, inspired throughout by Christian tenderness, hope,
and determination, is overcoming the handicaps of poverty,
ignorance, and hereditary taint, and bringing near the
establishment of an Indian Church.

But now there emerges a new consideration which applies

THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 413

equally to the community that is small and to that which is
great. It will be useless to have an educational system, con
tinuously and rapidly developing the capacity of Christian
converts and fitting them for positions of responsibility and
influence, if the community must live under an ecclesiastical
or Mission organization which condemns it to perpetual tute
lage, and cannot naturally and without delay find room for
those who have been brought forward and are equipped for
leadership. Have we a constitution which retards or one
which promotes the development of an Indian Church ?

We may distinguish two epochs in the constitutional history
of our Indian Missions. For many years, we may say for
more than three-quarters of the century under review, the
Foreign Mission was the predominant body, and the Indian
Christian community was subordinate. The authoritative
assembly in the field was the District Meeting, composed at
first entirely of foreign Missionaries and then gradually enlarged
by the coming in of ordained Indian Ministers. Though their
number tended continually to increase, it was the voice of the
foreign Missionary which was most often heard and prevailed.
At the home end the Missionary Committee received the
representations of the District Meetings and exercised supreme
control.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the genius and
devotion of W. H. Findlay gave expression to the thoughts of
many minds, and provided for the Indian, as for other fields,
a new constitution, which was based upon the distinction
between ' Church ' and ' Mission ' as fundamental. Findlay
was possessed of, and inspired by, the conviction that the
former must increase and the latter must decrease. He foresaw
clearly that as the Indian Church grows in goodness, wisdom,
and power, the Foreign Mission will become, and ought to
become, ancillary to it. Keeping this ideal steadfastly before
him, he drafted a constitution which makes the District
Synod the court of the local Church. It is composed of Indian
Ministers and laymen with the foreign Missionaries. It deals
with questions of ministerial discipline and stationing, with the
spiritual condition of the Churches and all work maintained
out of local resources. Over against it is the Local Committee,
which is the body of Missionaries in the District, though in
some Districts Indian Ministers and laymen have been specially

414 THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE

elected to serve upon it. The Local Committee deals with
the personal affairs of the Missionaries, and with work carried
on with the funds of the Missionary Society. Further, a
classification of Circuits was introduced, designed to encourage
effort in the Indian Church. ' A ' Circuits are those which are
self-supporting and capable of filling all the lay offices of
Methodism. ' B ' Circuits are such as still need a grant-in-aid
from the Missionary Society ; while the ' C ' Circuit is one
which is mainly dependent upon it. This organization had
some obvious defects. There was a certain amount of over
lapping and duplication in it. But it had the great merit of
holding up conspicuously a noble ideal.

At the time of writing it would appear that the constitution
drafted by Mr. Findlay has served its day and achieved its
purpose. Indian Methodism is ready for another step forward.
It seems likely that changes will be introduced which will
practically sweep away the Local Committee and commit all
administration on the field to the Synod. We shall then have
come near to the realization of our ultimate aim — an
ecclesiastical organization which of itself finds room for the
expanding capacity of the Indian Ministers and laymen, and,
in course of time, with the progress and development of the
Indian Church, must become a predominantly Indian body.
But we need to be aware lest we have the form of freedom
without its reality. After all, the highest guarantee for the
liberties of the Indian Church is to be found, not in the most
liberal constitution that can be devised, but in the genuine
Christian spirit of our Missionaries and of the Church at home-
in our willingness to co-operate as comrades and to serve, our
desire not to exercise ' overlordship ' but to be ' helpers of
a joy.'

Pursuing this train of thought to its terminus, what do we
discern as the Indian Church of the future ? Plainly, unless
some other influence came in to change the form and the
direction of development and progress, the Indian Church
would become a self-supporting, remote province of British
Methodism, and finally it might hive off to form a separate
Conference. That is how the work of the Missionary Society
has culminated elsewhere. Will India, then, follow the
example of Canada and Australasia and South Africa ?

We think not, because two increasingly powerful influences

THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 415

have been left out of the reckoning. One of these is the growing
desire for union among Christians of different denominations ;
and the other is the whole complex of emotion and resolve
connoted by the word ' Nationalism.' These two impulses
can be distinguished and kept apart in our treatment ; though
in India, as a matter of fact, they have been closely associated,
and have reinforced each other. Protestant Missionaries of
many denominations and different nationalities feel that
their divisions have lost their value, and are a sore hindrance.
Over against Hinduism or Islam the dogmas separating the
Christian sects and varieties of Church order shrink into in
significance. A Missionary is compelled, by his work and
experience, to seek out the things that are fundamental, and
to lay emphasis upon them alone. Moreover, the task of
converting India is so stupendous that it calls for the most
efficient disposition of the available forces. Denominational
rivalry and overlapping are doubly wasteful and criminal
on the Mission Field. Many great projects can only be carried
through by whole-hearted co-operation among the Missions ;
they are beyond the power of any one Mission to undertake
in isolation. Thus, in one way and another, the mind of the
Missionary has been impressed with the necessity for a united
front and for common action. But above all and through all
there has been the gracious influence of the Divine Spirit,
rebuking faction, subduing pride, and leading Missionaries in
the direction of a fuller fellowship. For many of them the
priestly prayer of Christ, that we all may be one, will not be
answered until there is again a visible expression of oneness
in a reunited Church.

The first actual reunion in India took place among the
Presbyterians of various nationalities, principally Scottish,
Canadian, and American. Their Missions joined together
in 1901 to form a Presbyterian Church of India. This coming
together was comparatively easy, because it did not involve
any revision of creeds or change in Church order. It was
followed, however, by a much more significant act of union,
when the South India United Church was formed out of the
congregations of the London Missionary Society and the
America Madura Mission, both of them with a Congregational
ancestry and polity ; of the Missions belonging to the Estab
lished and Free Churches of Scotland ; and of the American

416 THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE

Arcot Mission, which is historically connected with the Dutch
Reformed Church. Here it was necessary for all parties to
consent to considerable changes in Church government, and
new Confessions were adopted. For some time negotiations
were carried on by the United Church with the Wesleyan
Synods of South India, with the knowledge and approval of
the Missionary Committee at home ; but they did not lead
to any definite proposal of union. The strongest reluctance
to join the United Church was shown by the Indian Ministers,
among whom there was a natural and not unworthy desire to
retain their connexion with the British Conference. But
while we have remained outside of the United Church of South
India, the movement has gone on, and to-day even more
significant endeavours are on foot. Conferences of repre
sentatives of the South India United Church and of the Anglican
congregations in India — in particular, of the great Tinnevelly
Church of C.M.S. origin — have been held. Here both parties
came to grips with the great difficulty among Protestants —
the dogma of the historic episcopate. Suggestions have been
put forward which aim at preserving what is best in each
organization represented — the voice of the congregation in
the appointment of its Minister and the Local Committee for
the administration of congregational affairs ; central govern
ment through a Synod and General Assembly ; and, finally,
a constitutional episcopate, the Bishops being chosen by the
Synods and acting in co-operation with them. The expedient
of a ' Commission ' which will confer upon the Ministers of
one communion the power to preach and administer the
Sacraments within the other communion is proposed to sur
mount the difficulty of the transition stage. Whether or not
the proposed solution will prove practicable, there is evidence
in these negotiations of a desire for union amounting to a
passion. But what we are looking upon is not so much an
Indian movement as an earnest endeavour of Western Con-
gregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians to form a
complete fellowship. It is the same movement as manifests
itself in the homelands ; but in the Mission Field it is less
hampered by traditions, and the positive forces impelling to
reunion operate much more strongly.

Nationalism works alongside of this force for unity. If
the origin of the reunion movement is to be found among

THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 417

Foreign Missionaries, Nationalism has its springs in the heart
of the Indian. The one is inspired by a vision of the Church
and the other by a vision of the State. Nationalism cannot
be limited to political activities, but its chief manifestation
hitherto has been in politics.

Many an Indian Christian is no longer content that
his religious life shall be directed by a foreign teacher, or
that the affairs of the community to which he belongs shall
be mainly under foreign control. He feels that this sub
ordination fastens upon his race a stigma of inferiority,
and that there is not within the Christian com
munity scope for the powers of its most gifted members.
Moreover, he believes that a predominantly foreign direction
is always in danger of becoming misdirection, and that the
Indian Church will never exhibit its natural graces or make
its characteristic contribution to the fullness of Christian
truth and life until it is free to go its own way and to manage
its own affairs.

The Joint Committee of the South India United Church
and of the Anglican Church in India adopted a statement
in which they said, 'Our only desire, therefore, is so to
organize the Church in India that it shall give the
Indian expression of the spirit, the thought, and the life of
the Church universal.' No one up to the present has been
very successful or explicit in indicating what the Indian ex
pression of this life will be. It has been said truly that the
forms of worship used in Indian Churches are too Western •
the hymns and liturgies, the forms of prayer and teaching'
are sometimes painfully out of harmony with Indian culture'
We may expect an Indian Church of the future to provide
itself with modes of worship which are more in keeping with
Jts genius. Then, again, the education given under foreign
Missionaries in our boarding schools is criticized as being
out of relation with the life of the people. When such
institutions are wholly under Indian supervision and
.nstruction, it is thought that beneficial changes will be
introduced. India, with its contemplative habits and its
speculative power, ought to furnish new views of the truth
as it is in Jesus, but so far her contribution to Christian theology
and philosophy has been small. This is a wide field for the
activities of the Indian Church of the future
27

4i8 THE INDIAN CHURCH OF THE FUTURE

While in the closing paragraphs of this chapter we have
distinguished between the movements towards reunion and
towards the ' Indianization ' of the Church, it would be untrue
to suggest that these two are in opposition. The one may
have had its origin with the foreign Missionary and the other
with the Indian Christian, but both are found within the
one bosom and converge on the same end, and that is the
establishment of one Church in India which shall be truly
Indian.1

Because the writer of this chapter believes that these two
influences will ultimately prevail, his view of our Church in
the future is not that it will be a separate Conference of Metho
dism, but that it will become a part of a great Indian Church.
The ideal of an Ecumenical Methodism is no more likely to be
realized in India than in China. For many years — no man
can say how long — India will need the services of our
Missionaries and the gifts of British Methodism ; but the time
may come when the Missionaries whom we send abroad will
be ' permitted to labour in connexion with ' an Indian Church,
and our Missionary Society will enjoy the affection and esteem
of that Church as a welcome Auxiliary.

1 The National Christian Council of India has already effected a federation of the
Protestant Churches of India, and as at present constituted it consists of Indians
and foreign Missionaries in equal numbers.

PART III

METHODIST MISSIONS IN CHINA

PROLEGOMENA

' The greatest Mission Field in the World ' — Knowledge and Ethics
—The Lack of Power— Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism— Opium
and the British East India Company— An Evil Inheritance.

HENRY DRUMMOND has said that China is the greatest Mission
Field in the world. This is true in more than one particular.
China occupies one-third of Asia, and in geographical measure
ment it is one-tenth of the habitable globe. In population it
is easily first of all. In material resources it is probably the
wealthiest portion of the earth's surface, and in science and
art it carries our thought back to the remote ages of the world's
history. But that which gives China the pre-eminence among
the different fields of missionary enterprise is not to be found
in any of these things. It lies rather in the character of the
people who inhabit a country so much before the attention
of the civilized world to-day.

In the past China stood for two things ; the first was the
aristocracy of literature, and the other was an absolute sur
render to moral ideals. If these had existed without admixture
of antagonistic elements they might have placed China in the
front rank of the nations ; but to these generalizations we
must add a third— China affords a conspicuous example of
arrested development. The treasures of literature which
she considered to be her sufficient enrichment belong to the
past, and her moral ideals are to be found in the maxims of
Confucius. But the man whom China delighted to honour
was the scholar. The many thousands who crowded her
examination halls knew that preferment would be given to
the man whose essays approached that standard of perfection
which was laid down in ancient canons. Neither military
genius nor administrative ability could compare with the
trained mind which was versed in the wisdom of the ancients

421

422 PROLEGOMENA

and had imbibed their spirit. If this acknowledgement of
the supremacy of mind had been linked with openness of
vision, and had contained within itself the vital principle
which ensures continual growth, who can say what the position
of China in the twentieth century would have been ? The
Chinese had a long start in front of other nations. They are
a people

Whose astronomers made accurate recorded observations two
hundred years before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees ; who used
firearms at the beginning of the Christian era ; who wore silk and lived
in houses when our ancestors wore the undressed skins of animals
and lived in caves ; who invented printing by movable types five
hundred years before that art was known in Europe ; who discovered
the principle of the mariner's compass, and who invented the arch,
to which our modern architecture is so greatly indebted.1

Yet these same people have been the mockery and the victims
of other nations. They have been treated as a people of no
account. The flimsiest pretexts have been put forward for
occupying any part of Chinese territory which seemed to other
nations desirable, either from the point of view of trade or
from that of strategy. The occupation by Russia of Port
Arthur and by Germany of Kiaou Chou was followed by the
occupation of Wei Hai Wei by the British, and later still China
stood by inert and helpless while the Japanese made one of
her fairest provinces the theatre of their war. All this would
have been impossible if it had not been that the Chinese were
wrapped in luxurious dreams of their glorious past, and of
their ancient superiority to other nations. They showed a
strange incapacity to adjust themselves to the rapidly chang
ing environment of modern times, and if life be ' the continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external ' » the Chinese
were indeed ' dead while they lived.'

The same hopeless contrast is to be found in the sphere of
morals. Under the influence of the moral precepts of Confucius
the average Chinaman exhibits certain qualities which appeal
strongly to visitors from the West. The practice of courtesy
is carried to a degree which seems an almost grotesque exaggera
tion, and the obedience which is shown to a recognized and
accepted authority leaves little to be desired. It has secured

1 A. J. Brown, New Forces in Old China, p. 39.

1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, Vol. I., p. 74.

PROLEGOMENA 423

a wonderful solidarity of social and national life throughout
the centuries. In industry, patience, and cheerfulness under
adverse circumstances, the Chinaman may well be considered
a pattern for other peoples. These are the easily recognized
effects of the enforcing of Confucian ethics which has, for its
centre, the duty of obedience to parents and respect for elders.
But as soon as we pass from the categories of deportment and
the more passive moral qualities, we step at once into a region
of darkness. Corruption is notorious, not only among the
officials of government but in all classes, and another wide
spread defect is to be found in cruelty. It has often been
questioned whether the extraordinary insensibility to pain
evinced by Chinese is the cause or the effect of a cruelty which
forms so striking a contrast with the suavity and courtesy
which they maintain in demeanour. The quality of mercy
is little understood, and honour and purity seem to have died
out so completely that it is scarcely possible to find terms
which will express those ideas as they are commonly understood
among Christians.

The cause of this failure on the positive side of right living
will probably be found in the severance between religion and
morality set up by the Confucian system.

The Chinese have the loftiest moral code which the human mind,
unaided by Divine revelation, has ever produced, and its crystalline
precepts have been the rich inheritance of every successive present
from every successive past,1

and yet this wide breach between doing and suffering pervades
the whole region of moral conduct. To find its ultimate
source we must go behind the failure inherent in the Confucian
system, and we shall find that it shares the defect common to
all systems of Pantheism. It is, indeed, a disputed point
whether the idea of a personal God was ever held by the
Chinese, but if it ever existed it has long since disappeared.
The ' Heaven ' which formed the object of worship in great
Imperial celebrations seems to be used in the same sense as
the ' Varuna ' of Aryan times ; and in the one case, as in the
other, the conception speedily passed into that of an all-
pervasive principle in which nothing of what we imply by
' personality ' can be discovered. Now every system of

1 A. H. Smith, China in Convulsion.

424 PROLEGOMENA

morals depends ultimately upon its doctrine of God. The
first question which arises in considering any ethical system
is, ' What are its sanctions ? ' If the authority at the back
of the ' categorical imperative ' be final, if its scope be
sufficiently comprehensive to make the edict a universal law,
then we may expect such a system to create character and
conscience, both in the individual and in the society. Neither
finality nor universality belongs to ethics apart from God, and it
is not enough to know that God is worshipped ; the question
remains, What sort of God claims homage and obedience ?
Judged by these tests, the failure of Confucian ethics, impressive
as they are, can be easily explained.

Given, then, a nation imbued with the custom of ancestral
worship, glorifying its past and scorning to adjust itself to
ever-changing conditions of life and the widening horizon of
knowledge, possessing a justly revered moral code but lacking
that principle of life which belongs to the great conception
of the fatherhood of God, it is not difficult to account for the
prevalent Chinese character. The Chinaman's ideals of life
gather around knowledge ; to this he gives the highest place
and the greatest rewards. He acknowledges the appeal to
righteousness, though this is applied to the passive rather
than to the active and positive side of conduct. But know
ledge has not given him power, and his morals are to be found
in the worship of the letter rather than in obedience to the
spirit.

In the Buddhism and the Taoism which the Chinaman adds
to his Confucianism we may find the pathetic attempt to
supplement the moral code which takes no count of God. The
Chinaman cannot worship a code of laws, and so when the
hunger for worship comes to him, as it comes to every human
heart, he turns to the figure of the Buddha. Remote, passion
less, undisturbed, it seems to him to suggest elements of deity
which appeal to him ; he renders it a ready worship, and places
the image of the Buddha side by side with that of Confucius.
It has sometimes been said that the three religions recognized
by the State in China are one, but it is more accurate to say
that while they are quite distinct, and in some respects
mutually contradictory, they meet the differing moods of the
Chinaman. They unite, not in their characteristic teachings,
but in the consciousness of the worshipper who seeks each in

PROLEGOMENA 425

turn, as his need of the moment may dictate. Buddhism as a
denned and authoritative system of religion has not been woven
into the religious life of China as it has been in Thibet. It is
more a fashion, a matter of occasional observance, than a
religion. In 845 A.D., when it seemed likely to displace Con
fucianism, the Imperial authority became alarmed, and an
edict was at once forthcoming, enacting the destruction of all
monasteries and other Buddhistic buildings, and forcing the
monks to return to secular employment. From that time it
has become a matter of interest to intellectuals, and a happy
hunting-ground for those who belonged to eclectic societies.
Idolatry, though repugnant and meaningless to the first dis
ciples of Gautama, became a feature of the later observance of
Buddhists. The human heart took a deplorable revenge upon
the teacher who had robbed it of its belief in God by deifying
the teacher himself, and from worshipping the Buddha transi
tion to the worship of other emblems was easy. The most
popular of these is Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, and this
deity received the adoration of those who in their sorrows
long for the heart of compassion in One who is greater than
the evil which has afflicted them. As is natural, women in
particular, suffering from the many disappointments of the
instincts of motherhood, or threatened with the displeasure
of their husbands because those instincts lack fulfilment,
crowd the temples of the Goddess of Mercy, and lay their
infinitely pathetic offerings at the feet that never move an
inch to comfort or relieve.

But neither Confucianism nor Buddhism covers the whole
field of life for the Chinaman. There remains the world of
dread, mysterious forces which have their effect upon his
innate sense of wonder and awe. He dimly sees the working
of laws for whose origin he offers no explanation, and for whose
purpose he has no conjecture. He therefore adds to Confucian
ethics and Buddhist ritual the superstition and the magic
of the Taoist priest. Taoism, like Buddhism, has sadly de
generated from that which was taught by Lao Tsze, and is
now a system of sorcery which trades upon superstition and
ignorance. In time of trouble or anxiety it is to the Taoist
temple that the fearful or the afflicted repair ; charms which
are guaranteed to protect against calamity may there be pro
cured, and the exorcist, who for a price will drive out the

426 PROLEGOMENA

malevolent spirit which haunts the home or the person, will
be found there. Taoist temples are full of idols to be pro
pitiated or appeased.

This mere outline of the religious situation in China prior
to the advent of Christianity is all that can be attempted here,
but we may note the significant fact that when the Chinaman
accepts Christianity he obtains exactly that which turns his
natural endowments into strength and beauty of character.
The conservatism which made his mind at first impenetrable
to new truth now resolves itself into that tenacity of purpose
and that perfect loyalty to truth which were seen to such
effect on the occasion of the Boxer outbreak. During the
few months of that convulsion thousands of Chinese Christians
accepted torture and death rather than be false to their newly
professed devotion to Christ, and it is recorded that of the
hundreds of Christians who were taken into the shelter of the
Foreign Legation precincts in Pekin, not one proved false to
those who had sheltered him.

Their former homage to moral teachings is now translated
into obedience to the law of Christ, and the freedom with which
Christ makes His people free breaks down the bonds of super
stition ; the mind at once becomes joyous and receptive, ready
to respond to every worthy appeal. The whole story of Pastor
Hsi may be cited in illustration of our present contention that
when Christ comes into the life of the Chinaman, all worthy
natural endowments at once become instinct with life, and
reveal a range of power — moral, intellectual, and spiritual —
which, if it ever became universal, would place the Chinese
once more in the leading files of the human race on its march
to God. Our record has now to do with one of the many lines
along which Christian truth has entered into the life of this
amazing people. The story of its first approach in the ministry
of Robert Morison makes an impressive chapter in the ever-
repeated romance of human life, that romance which has to
do with the Lover and the beloved ; with the pursuing and
persistent Saviour, and proud, reluctant, but finally submitting
man.

In approaching the story of missionary enterprise in China
it is not possible to secure a correct historical perspective
without at least some reference to the subject of the opium

PROLEGOMENA 427

trade. For while the Christian faith, challenging the hold
obtained upon the Chinese heart and mind by other systems,
naturally evoked a certain amount of resentment and opposi
tion, there can be no doubt that these were accentuated by the
fact that the exponents of that faith were foreigners, and
shared the bitter and unrelenting hostility with which foreigners
were, and in a measure still are, regarded in China. The
Missionary, no less than the merchant, was greeted with the
cry of ' Foreign devil,' and the moral and spiritual truths he
came to proclaim were heavily discounted before examination
by this attitude towards those from whom the Chinaman had
suffered so much. If we examine into the causes of such
universal execration, we are confronted with the fact that in
earlier days China was not opposed to intercourse with
foreigners. The attitude of Kublai Khan towards the earliest
Venetian traders, so far from indicating hostility, proves that
the foreigner was not merely received with courtesy, but was
admitted into the communal life of the State, and was advanced
to both place and power. It is recorded that Marco Polo
during the whole period of seventeen years which he spent in
China was not only treated with respect and favour, but was
even advanced to high office, and was finally appointed
Governor of the city of Yang Chow. The earlier Missionaries
of Rome, too, seem to have had no difficulty in penetrating
into provinces far from the coast. Early in the seventeenth
century the Jesuit Ricci was in high favour with the Imperial
Court, and many churches were built for the worship of
Romanists during the period in which he and John Adam
Schall enjoyed the favour of the Emperor. It is on record
that Kublai Khan went so far as to request the Pope to send
a hundred Missionaries to China. But in the first half of the
eighteenth century the Imperial authorities became alarmed
at the political activities of the Romanists, and also at the
increasing use of opium and the moral and physical effects
which followed upon it. To say that opium was introduced
by the British is contrary to fact. It was probably introduced
by Arabs at a time long prior to the coming of the British
trader, and its use and value for medical purposes were acknow
ledged. Apparently the smoking of opium began in the island
of Formosa, and the practice spread from there to the mainland.
The Portuguese and the Dutch traded in the drug, and when

428 PROLEGOMENA

these were ousted from their dominant position on the high
seas the trade passed into the hands of the British. This was
a disastrous issue to British enterprise and supremacy. What
ever relief it may have brought to Indian budgets, its moral
effects have been calamitous. Edict after edict protesting
against the introduction of opium was issued by the Court ;
the severest penalties were laid upon those who cultivated the
poppy or took any part in the manufacture or sale of the drug.
But the profits of the trade and the venality of local governors
made such official denunciations of little value ; smuggling
was rife, and the trade rapidly assumed great dimensions.
Between 1860 and 1900 the value of the opium exported to
China rose from four and a half millions of pounds sterling
to more than nine and a half millions, and nearly the whole of
this came from India.

The attitude of the British East India Company to this
trade was most reprehensible. When it was seen that the
profits accruing were becoming considerable, the Company
took over the business as a monopoly. Then followed the
unhappy distinction made by Warren Hastings, when he said
that ' Opium was not a necessity of life, but a pernicious article
of luxury, which ought not to be permitted but for the purposes
of commerce only ; and the wisdom of the Government should
carefully restrain internal consumption.' The commodity
being prohibited in China, the contraband article was sold
secretly to merchants. The sales increased by leaps and
bounds, and the Indian revenue improved in proportion.
It was in vain that the Chinese protested, and that the Governor
of Canton thundered against the importation. The edicts
of Government were couched in terms of the utmost contempt
for all who took part in the unholy traffic, and such terms did
much to create the popular feeling against all ' Foreign bar
barians/ The East India Company meanwhile disclaimed,
and instructed its officers in China to disclaim, all knowledge
of the trade, though it licensed the ships that conveyed the
forbidden drug, and complacently received the revenue that
resulted. When in 1834 the monopoly of the East India
Company over the China trade was brought to an end, the
British Government sent out superintendents of trade ; but the
merchants who traded were left free to continue running their
contraband cargoes, and the resentment of the Clu'nese presently

PROLEGOMENA 429

developed into open acts of hostility, until in 1839 Great
Britain was at war with China. Doubtless the refusal of the
Chinese to recognize the official rank and status of Lord Napier,
who had been appointed Chief Superintendent of Trade, and
the obstinate refusal of the Chinese to treat with the foreigner
on terms of equality, had much to do with the actual outbreak
of war ; but the question remains whether the refusal and
opposition had not been formed, or at least accentuated, by
the alarm obviously felt by the Chinese at the unscrupulous
and determined attempt of traders to dispose of their baneful
cargoes in a country which had declared opium to be contra
band.

The result of the war was, of course, predetermined by the
superiority of the British in modern warfare, and a treaty of
peace was signed in 1842, by the terms of which Hong Kong
was ceded to the British, five ports were thrown open to foreign
trade, and the question of the traffic in opium was carefully
ignored. Lin, the Chinese Commissioner, who had been sent
to Canton to suppress the trade, and who had fought hard to
fulfil his commission, was degraded by the Chinese Court, the
fact of failure being considered to be a sufficient condemnation,
whatever the conditions might be. This chapter of English
history is not one which any right-minded Englishman can
contemplate without shame, and that from that time the
foreigner was exposed to the execrations of the Chinese is not
a matter at which any one can be surprised. There were other
more serious results. The indignation of the Chinese, their
sense of humiliation, and their loss of respect for the Govern
ment which had accepted it, were contributory causes of the
Tai-ping rebellion ; and the second war with Great Britain,
which followed in 1856, while it arose from the reluctance of
the Viceroy of Canton to admit foreigners into that city, or
to maintain anything but the most distant relations with
their representatives, was in reality due to a feeling which had
been accentuated to the point of bitterness as a result of their
earlier experience of foreigners who had been deaf to their
entreaties and indifferent to the moral evil which had followed
upon their illicit trade. The traders had filled their coffers,
but they had smirched the fair name of England, and had
created so strong an anti-foreign animus in the Chinese that
for many years to come the more legitimate offers of trade,

430 PROLEGOMENA

and all advances in the direction of friendly intercourse, were
met with suspicion, opposition, and hatred. Into thi«s evil
mJMiriianiy the Missionary entered by the mere fact that he
belonged to the hated race. His efforts were thwarted by
officials wherever it was safe to do so, and the common people
refused to listen to a teaching which the}- associated with an
immoral Government of unscrupulous barbarians. For years
to come the Missionaries were forced to accept the sorry
protection of the British gun-boat in the treaty-port.1

1 For an informing account of the later history of negotiations between Great
Britain and China in the matter of the opium trade the reader is iifLUul to the

.- -. .;••. .: .-..::;: y ; ;;

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

A Reluctant Administration — George Piercy — -The first Svnod —
The Tai-ping Rebellion- — War with Great Britain — The Treaty of
Tientsin— Fatshan— T. G. Selby— The Hakka People— Hong Kong—
Political Agitation,

THE Wesley an Missionary Society was long in making up its
mind to begin work in China. After the proclamation of
peace between Great Britain and China in 1842 several Societies
turned their attention to the latter country, and considerable
reinforcements were sent out by the London Missionary
Society and by American Churches already at work in this
field. But the Wesleyans seemed reluctant to move in this
direction in spite of the fact that contributions towards work
in this very field had been offered by individual members of
the Church. This hesitation of the Society is easily understood,
and was altogether reasonable. It was committed to an ever-
increasing expenditure in the West Indies, Africa, the South
Seas, and India. All these countries were under British
administration, and ample facilities for work were to be found
in them, while in China the Government had explicitly declared
its unwillingness to tolerate the foreign teaching. Further,
in the home Churches there was nothing like adequate provision
for the work already begun in the countries mentioned. It
was obvious that to establish and to develop that work the
resources of the Society would be heavily taxed, and those
resources seemed to have already reached the point of exhaus
tion. In 1844 the Society was in debt. Under such circum
stances the home Committee was bound to turn away from
the newly-opened field. In the Conference of 1846 both Dr.
Bunting and Dr. Beecham urged strongly that it was impossible
for the Committee to undertake what was likely to be an
expensive Mission in addition to those to which it was already

431

432 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

committed. Donations for a Mission to China had been received,
and were carefully preserved for such work when an adequate
opening should present itself, but in their opinion there was
no such opening at that time, nor were the offerings of the
Church sufficient to justify them in embarking upon so great
an enterprise. In spite of this statement, however, donations
continued to come in, and the Treasurer of the Society, Mr.
Thomas Farmer, offered to contribute the sum of a thousand
pounds in ten annual instalments. In 1851, by which time
six of these instalments had been paid, Mr. Farmer not only
completed the full amount of a thousand pounds, but also
promised to continue an annual subscription of one hundred
pounds towards a Mission in China.

Another centre from which pressure was put upon the
Committee was found in a gentleman of the name of Rowland
Rees, who was attached to the Royal Engineers, then a civil
department of the War Office. Mr. Rees was at that time
stationed in Hong Kong, where he held meetings in his own
house for Methodist soldiers, and conducted a Class-meeting.
In 1844 he wrote to the Missionary Secretaries urging that a
Missionary be sent to each of the five ports then opened on the
terms of the treaty concluded between Great Britain and
China. He also forwarded a subscription towards the work
which he hoped would be begun. Some years after a grandson
of Mr. Rees, the Rev. Philip Rees, became a Missionary in
China, and we shall come to his story in due course. But
the determining factor in breaking down the reluctance of the
Committee was found in the action taken by a young Local
Preacher in the Pickering Circuit. Mr. George Piercy had
the burden of China laid upon his heart, and he was unable
to wait until the Missionary Society had enough funds in sight
to justify them in sending Missionaries to that country. He
determined to go out at his own expense ; and he hoped that
if the time should come when his funds would be exhausted
he would be able to find employment by which he would be
able to support himself while continuing his work as an
evangelist. Here again we find ' the spirit of a great
adventure.'

Mr. Piercy set himself to study the Chinese language, and
sailed for Hong Kong in the autumn of 1850. It was known
at the Mission House that a Methodist soldier, Sergeant Ross,

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 433

had gathered together a few devout soldiers for mutual aid
and comfort of the spirit. Piercy therefore hoped to find a
Methodist Class in being when he arrived at Hong Kong ; but
when he landed he found that Sergeant Ross had died, and
that only one of the Methodist band remained. He was,
however, kindly received by Dr. Legge, of the London Mission
ary Society, and began work among the soldiers of the garrison.
A Society was soon formed, a small chapel was opened for
worship, and while thus ministering to the soldiers Piercy gave
himself up to the study of Chinese. He also set himself to
acquire some knowledge of medicine for the furtherance of his
work. He was still, however, on the threshold ; not yet had he
entered into the longed-for field of service. He speaks of
himself as having come ' fresh from the plough/ and of having
acquired few qualifications for work in China ' except a be
lieving heart, a firm spirit, and an inflexibility of spirit not to
be thwarted but by absolute impossibilities/ After all, these
were no mean qualifications. The question now arose where
he should begin his work when the way was opened for him
to do so. The coast nearest to Hong Kong was in the district
of Kowloon. That territory has since been ceded to Great
Britain, but at that time there was no probability that he
would be allowed to hold any property in that province, and he
found the dialect spoken there so different from that which
he had acquired in Hong Kong that the thought of beginning
at Kowloon was soon abandoned. He was greatly attracted
by Fatshan, the scene of a great medical service in after days,
but he finally decided to begin in the western suburbs of Canton.

Other Missionaries were already at work in Canton, but in
that swarming hive of human life there was abundant scope
for a strong Methodist Mission. It was not a Mission which
could be called ' strong ' which now approached Canton. The
Methodist Church in China in December, 1851, was represented
by a single and unordained Local Preacher, with no assured
support from the Church to which he belonged. The York
shire lad ' fresh from the plough ' landed from his boat, and
made his way through the crowded street, scarcely as yet
able to speak to the men he met, and greeted with cries of
' Foreign devil ' — it was in such wise that George Piercy entered
upon his memorable ministry ; it was in such wise that the
Methodist Church came to China,

434 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

After residing in Canton for some time Piercy was moved
to make a formal offer of his service to the Wesleyan Missionary
Society, sending with this offer his views of Methodist doctrine
and discipline in catechetical form, and the Society in England
was thus confronted with an alternative which it had long
considered, but upon which it had not been able to take any
definite action. Meantime others in England had felt the
burden of China on their hearts. The Rev. W. R. Beach, who
had been conscious for some time of a ' call ' from that distant
land, offered to go if the Society would accept his service, and
a young student, then in Richmond College, offered to find
his own maintenance if the Committee would grant him per
mission to join Piercy in Canton. The student's name was
Josiah Cox, and in the providence of God he was to lay the
foundations of a Church, the dimensions of which he never
guessed at, in the very heart of a great Empire. It is a matter
to be noted that the Methodist Church in China was born in
the mind and heart of a few devoted men, and not in the
deliberate and collective counsel of the Church.

The Committee, cautious as it was, could not withstand the
pressure brought to bear upon it from so many directions, and
in a letter to Piercy dated January 19, 1853, he was informed
that Messrs. Beach and Cox had been ordained to the Ministry
in China, and that they were instructed to bear to him a parch
ment equivalent to letters of ordination for Piercy himself.
The position thus assigned to the Rev. George Piercy
was afterwards questioned by some of the Presbyterian
Missionaries in Canton, who objected to his joining them in
the administration of the Lord's Supper on the ground that
he had not been ordained by the imposition of hands, but the
Secretaries in London, Dr. Osborn, Dr. Hoole, Dr. Beecham
and William Arthur, defended the validity of his ordination,
and insisted that ' the Methodist Connexion does not deem
imposition of hands essential to a scriptural and valid Ministry,
but a ceremony which may be used or not as circumstances
require ; a scriptural ceremony indeed, highly becoming and
generally expedient ; but not of the essence of ordination.'
Together with this document there was also sent an elaborate
statement described as ' Instructions to the Missionaries
appointed to commence a Mission in China.' This document
was afterwards printed in pursuance of a resolution of the

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 435

Committee. It consists of much more than ' Instructions.'
The Secretaries justify their hesitation in beginning work in
China on the grounds which we have already considered, and
proceeed to enumerate the causes which led to their changed
purpose in the matter. They then consider the question of
the most suitable sphere of their operations, finally deciding,
largely on the ground that Piercy had already obtained a
foothold in Canton, that this city should be their first centre.
The question of finance is then considered, and the anxiety
of the Committee on this matter is evidenced by the careful
way in which expenditure is made to depend, not upon the
discretion of the Missionaries, nor upon contingent circum
stances, but upon a carefully defined plan, so that the Com
mittee might be able to forecast at the commencement of each
year what its commitments for that year would be. The
funds allotted from year to year were not to be used ' except
to a very limited extent ' for the acquiring of property, but
in the support and extension of the work itself. The
Missionaries were to aim especially at the conversion of adults,
and not to be deterred by the difficulty of securing a change
of faith in these. Education, for the moment to be limited
to the use of Chinese as a medium, was to be taken up, and the
training of a Native Ministry is especially enjoined. Then
follow minute instructions as to establishing the special
ordinances, and maintaining the discipline, of the Methodist
Church. It is evident that the Committee felt the importance
of the step they were then taking in beginning new work in a
country which differed in many ways from those in which work
had been attempted hitherto, and which in its vast extent
and population might lead to expense far beyond the means
at their command. But it may be considered whether such
minute instructions did not cramp and fetter those who were
embarking upon an enterprise in which circumstances might
demand a measure of freedom for those who were to commend
the Christian faith to a people of strongly marked and strange
characteristics.

In the year 1853 the first Synod of the Methodist Church in
China was held. In the month of December of that year the
three Missionaries already mentioned met in Canton. As Josiah
Cox wrote, ' It did not seem a very imposing affair — three
young men consulting over certain papers in a private room ;

436 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

but this is only the earnest of something more worthy of
Methodism, and more adequate to the work/ He strongly
supported Piercy in urging that educational work was a first
necessity. The Missionaries took careful heed of the advice
of the Committee to aim at the conversion of the adult, but
they claimed that the educational branch of their work was
of vital importance. They also pleaded for an immediate
increase of their staff in view of the fact that two or three years
must elapse before a Missionary would become an efficient
preacher in Chinese. ' A long forethought, a long preparing,
and a long service, are called for in a Chinese Mission.' This
first Report of the ' three young men in a private room ' is
characterized by wisdom and loyalty. It offered an excellent
augury for the new adventure of the Church. Two of them
were destined, in the providence of God, to be the founders
of the Methodist Church in two of the greatest centres of life
in China, but Beach did not continue long in this service. In
1856 he withdrew from the Methodist Church and became a
Chaplain in connexion with the Anglican Church.

Beach and Cox had not been many weeks in Canton before
the Tai-ping rebellion drew the eyes of all the world to China.
The movement began with the appearance of Hung Sin-ts'uan,
the son of a humble settler, who presented himself for examina
tion with a view of obtaining the degree which would qualify
him for office. In the final trial he failed, and was convinced
that bribery and favouritism were the real cause of his failure.
The opium war of 1842 had further opened his eyes to the
corruption and weakness of his country, and had induced in
him a profound depression. While in this state of mind he
happened to read certain books and tracts which had been
given him by Liang A-fah, a convert of Dr. Milne's, and after
wards the coadjutor of Dr. Morison in his literary work. He
connected what he found in the books with certain visions
which, he said, had been given him during his illness, and in
consequence began to denounce idolatry and to lead a crusade
against the Manchu dynasty. He finally proclaimed himself
' The King of Great Peace/ and in 1850 he took up arms
against the Emperor. Early successes led to his being joined
by crowds of malcontents. Secret societies, always to be
found in China, espoused his cause, and he led a great army
almost to the gates of Pekin. There was much in the earlier

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 437

movement which suggested a Christian background, if not a
Christian motive. Hung inculcated not only the condemnation
of idolatry, but also the observance of the Sabbath, the cir
culation of the Christian Scriptures, and a considerable amount
of Christian instruction. Hung himself had previously applied
to an American Baptist Missionary for admission to the
Christian Church, and his baptism was deferred only because
it was felt that his motive was not free from suspicion. It can
scarcely be a matter for wonder that Missionaries in China
at that time regarded the movement with hope,1 and we shall
see that it had much to do with the commencement of our
Mission in Wuchang.

In the Notices of 1853 there appears a long letter from Josiah
Cox, giving a full account of the movement and of its prominent
features. The writer concludes with the confession that he
anticipates a good result from the movement, and commends
it to God in prayer. He wrote, ' When I came to China I felt
all around me the gloom of midnight darkness ; now the
clouds seem to be breaking, and I know not what the day may
bring, but I hail the glimmering dawn/ This view of the
Tai-ping rebellion was shared by the Committee in England.
In a secretarial letter written by Dr. Beecham the statement
is made :

To take the lowest view of the movement, God evidently appears,
in His providence, to be breaking down the idolatrous Tartar power
in China which hitherto has placed itself in opposition to His truth,
and thus to be preparing the way for the more extensive introduction
of the Gospel ; and when we take into consideration the considerable
amount of scriptural truth which the insurgents appear to possess we
are led to anticipate some favourable result from its influence, not
withstanding the dangerous error with which that truth is commingled.
We entertain the strong conviction that God will so overrule the whole
as to make it subservient to His own gracious designs respecting China
— that important portion of the inheritance of His dear Son.

But whatever element of Christianity may have been in the
original movement, it was quickly obscured and discarded.
The crusade degenerated into a rebellion, in the course of which
millions of human beings were slain, and the whole country
traversed by the army of Hung was devastated. Hung failed
deplorably in the task of administration in the provinces he

1 See Griffith John, by the Rev. R, VVardlavv Thompson, pp. 124-142.

438 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

had occupied. He gave himself up to a life of self-indulgence,
and when the Imperial troops under General Gordon captured
Nanking in 1864, he closed his extraordinary career by suicide.

In 1856, while the whole country was in the throes of this
rebellion, war again broke out between Great Britain and
China, and, as on the former occasion, the opium traffic was
its real cause. A small vessel, named the Arrow, was engaged
in smuggling opium into China, and, entirely without authoriz
ation, was flying the British flag. The Chinese authorities
seized the vessel as being engaged in contraband. This action
of theirs was held to be an insult to the national flag, and war
was declared. Peace was made at Tientsin, and in 1860 the
resultant treaty was ratified in Pekin. While the war con
tinued it was impossible for the Missionaries to remain in
Canton, that city coming under the bombardment of British
men-of-war. They accordingly withdrew to the Portuguese
settlement at Macao, and waited for better days. They were
joined while they waited in Macao by three other Missionaries
sent out from England in 1854. These were the Revs. S.
Hutton, S. J. Smith, and J.Preston; but the years they spent
at Macao were given up to the study of the language, so that
when in 1858 they returned to Canton they had acquired ' a
very good ability to preach/ while Hutton in addition
had been able to instruct in theology a young Chinaman,
who, it was hoped, might one day become a Missionary to his
own people. During this time Josiah Cox visited Singapore
and Malacca, distributing Bibles and other Christian literature
to Chinese emigrants in those regions. When at last, in 1858,
they returned to Canton, it was found that their houses and
chapels had been burned to the ground, and they were obliged
to reside in rented houses until their homes could be rebuilt.

The treaty of Tientsin was of importance from a Missionary
point of view by reason of the following clause which it
contained :

The Christian religion having for its essential object to lead men to
virtue, the members of all Christian communions shall enjoy full
security for their persons, their property, and the full exercise of their
religious worship, and entire protection shall be given to Missionaries
who peaceably enter the country furnished with passports. No
obstacle shall be interposed by the Chinese authorities to the recognized
right of any person in China to embrace Christianity, if he please, and
to obey its requirements without being subjected on that account to

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 439

any penalty. Whatever has been hitherto written, proclaimed or
published in China by order of Government against the Christian faith
is wholly abrogated and annulled in all the provinces of the Empire.

This particular clause, however, in some mysterious way
appeared only in the French version of the treaty, and the
British authorities declared themselves unable to insist upon
the privileges it describes, though French Missionaries were
not slow to do so. Of greater importance was the fact that
nine other cities, including Hankow, were thrown open to
foreign trade and to foreigners who might choose to reside
within them. This treaty was received with great joy by
those who wished to bring to China something more than the
uncertain advantages of trade. In a letter to the Secretaries
Josiah Cox writes :

With regard to Missions, the treaty seems like a gift from God to
His Church, and I receive it with much gratitude. ... I think we
may avail ourselves of its provisions without danger of inducing
difficulties between the two Governments. If we are found faithful
men, God will help us to go forward.

It was also found that the attitude of the Cantonese towards
Missionaries had changed for the better, largely on account of
the excellent behaviour of the British troops who had occupied
the city during the war. So long as Missionaries remained in
the city they were in safety, their chief obstacle at this time
being the indifference of the people to the Gospel they pro
claimed. In the country it was far otherwise. Time and
again they were stoned and robbed, and found their lives in
peril from robbers and ill-disposed villagers. In 1862 the
Mission house in Canton was destroyed in a typhoon, in the
course of which a large junk was driven right into the house.
In spite of such things, however, the work was continued in
the patience of hope.

Piercy had from the first felt the attractiveness of Fatshan
as a centre of Mission work, and in 1860 he visited that city,
leaving behind him two colporteurs who should distribute
Christian literature. Later on Piercy 's prophetic vision was
fully justified, but the fulfilment was not seen for many years.

During the next twelve years eight Missionaries were sent
to Canton, but of these only few were able to remain for any
thing like a considerable number of years. J. S. Parkes

440 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

returned with broken health after four years of service (1860-
1864), and J. H. Rogers (1865-1869) did the same. F. P.
Napier was transferred after one year to Wuchang. E.
Sinzininex also remained in the District for only three years
(1873-1876). The other four, H. Parkes (1862-1881), J.
Gibson (1865-1879), S. Whitehead (1866-1875), T. G. Selby
(1868-1882), and F. J. Masters (1872-1882), were able to
remain longer, and proved themselves to be men of mark,
contributing much to the new Methodist Church struggling
into life. But the frequent removals were against the rapid
development which might have been expected from so strong
a reinforcement. One fruitful extension, however, belongs to
this period. In 1863 a proposal was sent to England, endorsed
by prominent residents in Canton, that stations outside Canton
should be occupied by the Methodist Church. Three gentlemen,
of whom the late Sir Robert Hart was one, promised to subscribe
a hundred pounds each if this extension was made ; but the
stations suggested did not seem the most suitable, and there
were not enough men with a knowledge of Chinese to make it
possible. Shortly after the true line of advance was found
in the North River District, and of this we shall have much to
say in due course.

Meantime the Committee in England had not been remiss
in pressing the claims of the Mission to China. Their policy
at first was to look upon that Mission as special and extra
to those to which they were already committed. Donations
and subscriptions had been made for this specific object even
before the work had begun, and the Committee urged that
this method of financing the work should be continued. It
was not until 1861 that the cost of the Mission to China was
charged to the general fund of the Society. In 1854 a special
meeting for the advocacy of the work in China was added
to the anniversary services of the Society. This took the
form of a breakfast, followed by a public meeting, and even
after the reference of the meeting had been enlarged to cover
other fields the gathering was known as ' The China Breakfast
Meeting.' The first of these special meetings took place on
May 29, 1854, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor of
London, the Right Honourable Thomas Sidney. The results
were most satisfactory. The financial proceeds, including
one gift of a thousand pounds, amounted to three thousand

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 441

pounds. Another welcome gift was that of six thousand
Chinese copies of the New Testament, but that which aroused
as much interest as any was the gift of twenty-five pounds
collected by Methodist soldiers serving in the Crimea. That
these men, suffering the notorious hardships of the Crimean
War, should thus have contributed to the service of their
Church in distant China, shows how widespread and deep-
seated was the Missionary feeling in the Methodist communion
at that time. Another interesting gift was sent to Mr. Piercy
towards the first Wesleyan chapel in Canton. This was the
gift of Messrs. Cole Brothers, of Sheffield. Their father had
contributed towards the chapel at Pickering, from which
Circuit Piercy had come. The gift thus carried on their
father's interest in the Pickering Church, and extended that
interest to the Far East. In 1861 a large legacy for Missions
in India and China was realized, and in the following year the
Committee allowed their hope to pass into confidence and
enterprise. The following extract appears in the Minutes of
the Committee meeting on June n, 1862 :

In regard to China, the Committee rejoice to find themselves in
somewhat peculiar circumstances, the funds for the requisite extension
having been already provided by the abounding liberality of two or
three individuals who are amongst their most munificent supporters.
The claims of Fatshan, so long and earnestly urged by Mr. Piercy, have
been specifically and for the present amply provided for by an
anonymous donor. It is therefore determined to commence operations
there as soon as suitable men can be trained and sent. The opening
at Hankow will be regarded by all the friends of the Society as one
which it would be scarcely less than criminal to neglect. Considering
the number and accessibility of the population, and the probability
that it will become the centre of European commerce in that vast
empire, the Committee feel that some portion of the liberal contribu
tions entrusted to the Society last year for the specific purpose of
extension in China may be most fittingly employed in the commence
ment of operations in Hankow, while any further accessions to their
funds may with equal propriety be employed in laying the foundations
of a Mission in Pekin and Tientsin.

It was also decided to begin medical work in Fatshan. As
early as 1858 Josiah Cox had associated himself with Dr.
Wang, of the London Missionary Society, in beginning medical
work in Canton, but the arrangement was not found to be
workable, and was abandoned in 1859. Now a more mature
scheme, and one destined to affect for good the whole of our

442 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

work in Canton, was prepared, but it was not until 1880 that
Dr. Wenyon had the honour of giving effect to the purpose of
the Committee.

Although the Committee was thus prepared to embark
upon a greatly extended scheme of work in China, it must not
be thought that they were reckless in their administration of
the funds thus realized. At the breakfast meeting of 1858 the
Rev. W. B. Boyce had thought it necessary to warn the Church
that owing to the extent and importance of the field they
could not afford to have a little Mission in China. Warnings
were also sent to Piercy against overdrawing the grants
allowed by the Committee, and a solemn injunction, which was
scarcely necessary, was sent to the Synod of 1863 to the effect
that the Missionaries should ' guard against the disposition
to assimilate their style of living to that of the rich merchants
and civilians with whom they were living on terms of social
equality.'

The financial exhilaration of the Committee soon passed
away, and its place was taken by an equal anxiety. This had
a twofold effect, and in either case it was deplorable. On
the one hand, it prevented the Committee from providing
beforehand the supply of Missionaries to carry on the work
when either the failure of health or the arrival of furlough
entailed the return of Missionaries to England. Thus in
1865 Piercy was in England on furlough, and Cox had removed
to Hankow. Preston, Smith, Hutton, and J. S. Parkes had
all been in Canton for some years, and it seemed likely that
family affliction would necessitate the return of several of
these. There was every probability that in 1866 Preston
would be the only Missionary of the first group remaining in
Canton, and he would then have been ten years on the field.
With the exception of Henry Parkes, who had been sent out
for the special object of beginning work in Fatshan, no rein
forcement had then reached Canton, and the Missionaries
were depressed in contemplating the prospect before them.
Piercy, during his furlough, wrote a piteous letter to the
Secretaries, calling attention to this lack of provision on their
part. He wrote in the deepest pain and sorrow to say that
under such circumstances he could no longer say that he was
ready to return to China. Happily the depression passed
away, and he returned in 1866.

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 443

The second ill-effect of secretarial anxiety was that the
letters written about this time to the men on the field were the
very opposite of encouraging. Not only did they convey the
information that new men for Canton could not be found ; they
abounded in criticism of the expenditure of money on the
field. Thus when the wife of one of the Missionaries was too
ill to nurse her baby, objection was taken to the quite necessary
provision of a wet-nurse. So constant was this feature of the
letters written about this time to Canton that Cox was led
on behalf of his married colleagues to protest against the
spirit of such communications. He did so in a letter as strong
as it was delicate and tender. He implores the Committee
to give their confidence to the Missionaries on the field. Messrs.
Gibson and Rogers arrived in Canton during the month of
March, 1866 ; but, of course, until they had learned to speak
Chinese they could not be supposed to fill the blanks caused
by the return of those who were efficient preachers in that
language. The Committee recognizes this in a statement
made at the time, but it would have indicated something more
like statesmanship if they had sent the men out three years
before. The year 1866 may be taken as indicating the close
of the first period of work in China, and the annual report
shows that there were then six Missionaries attached to this
field, and there were six Catechists to assist them. There
were thirty-nine members in the Church, and Fatshan was
the only station mentioned outside Canton.

Of the circumstances that led to the removal of Josiah Cox
to Hankow, and of the Mission that resulted in that great
central city, a full account will appear in a later chapter. In
1865 the work in Hankow was put under a separate adminis
tration, and from that time the new District was independent
of that in Canton. The removal of Cox, and the return of
Preston to England in 1866, left Piercy the sole survivor of
those who had shared the labour and the peril of pioneer
work among an unfriendly and often truculent people. He
found himself the leader of men who for some years would be
unable to render help in preaching to the people, and the fact
that they were so much younger than himself and lacking in
experience was unfortunate for Piercy himself. It led him
to attempt to administer the work of the District, relying too
much upon his own initiative, and contenting himself with the

444 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

approval of the Secretaries in London, without first securing
the support of his colleagues. This course had unfortunate
results later on. For the first few years the work was done
by the Catechists who accompanied the Missionaries in touring
among the villages and in distributing literature in Canton.
Occasional visits were also paid to Fatshan, where one of
these Catechists had been stationed for some years. In 1866
the Revs. F. P. Napier and Silvester Whitehead arrived in
Canton, and two years later they were followed by the Rev.
T. G. Selby. All of these were men of outstanding ability,
and their selection shows the anxiety of the Committee to
send their best recruits to the new Mission in China. In 1868
Mr. Whitehead was appointed to visit Fatshan three times in
every month, but up to that time no convert had appeared
in that city. It is noteworthy, too, that in that same year
two colporteurs were appointed to reside in Shiuchow. Of
this place we shall have much to say later on.

In 1870 there was a recrudescence of anti-foreign feeling
throughout China, and this culminated in a particularly
brutal attack upon the Roman Catholic orphanage established
by the Sisters of Mercy in Tientsin. A similar animosity
appeared in the far south, especially in Fatshan, where the
Rev. T. G. Selby was singled out as the object of hatred and
attack. His house was described in public placards, and an
explicit invitation to destroy it was given. The vilest actions
were ascribed to the Missionary as justification for any violence
the mob might see fit to use, while Chinese Christians were
told that they had only a few days to live . If Selby had claimed
protection for himself under the terms of the Treaty of
Tientsin, the only effect would have been an order from the
British Consul to leave Fatshan and to reside in Canton.
Fortunately at this point the American Consul intervened,
and a proclamation was posted in Fatshan calling upon the
people to show respect to foreigners and to abstain from acts
of violence. The excitement at once died down, but it was
some time before those who were beginning to show an interest
in the Christian religion had the courage to do so openly.
The hatred of the people, inflamed by the news from Tientsin,
and encouraged by official delay in punishing the agents of
that outrage, was only smothered by the vice-regal proclama
tion, and resentment thus curbed was all the more sullen.

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 445

In 1871 the mob was again excited by a rumour that a certain
powder was being put into the public wells by the Missionaries,
the effect of which would be a disease among those who used
the water. Since the Missionaries were the only persons who
could cure the ailment, people would be compelled to go to
them for relief. When after a time no disease appeared the
Chinese lost their faith in those who thus played upon their
gullibility.

For many years Fatshan was the centre in which this
hostile feeling was most apparent, but animosity gave way to
the competitive spirit. Chinese associations were formed for
the preaching of Confucian ethics, and for the inculcation of
patriotic principles, missionary methods being slavishly
copied in this propaganda. Little by little the hostile feeling
diminished, and Selby was able to build a Mission house in
Fatshan. Here he was joined in 1874 by the Rev. Edward
Sinzininex, and in 1876 the two issued a circular advocating
a system of itinerancy made binding upon all Missionaries,
so that all would be expected to tour among the towns and
villages, whether they liked it or not. The issuing of this
document was due to the recognition of the unquestioned fact
that such tours were most fruitful in bringing the Gospel before
the attention of persons removed from the indifference and
hostility prevalent in the larger towns and cities. But the
scheme met with much criticism, largely on account of the
rigidity of the rule proposed. Gibson in Canton and Scar
borough in Hankow both wrote at great length against the
adoption of any such rule. Perhaps the strongest adverse
criticism was made by one who himself was one of the most
assiduous and successful followers of the practice advocated.
David Hill was strongly opposed to any such law being laid
down by the Committee. He urged that the method of work
should be more spontaneous on the part of the individual
Missionary ; that each man should discover the kind of work
for which he was best adapted, and should follow that fully
and freely. Hill was reluctant to increase the measure of
organization already prominent in the Methodist system. He
declared himself in favour of ' not the grinding service of the
slave, but the abounding liberty of a son.' The scheme was
not adopted, but the incident is of importance as indicating
the bent of Selby 's thought at this time. The burden of souls

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448 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

warmed/ and of a new outlook upon life, and such testimony
led at last to a request for a Christian teacher, who found on his
arrival ' a people prepared of the Lord.' It was thus that the
word came to U-Nyen, thirty miles west of Shiuchow, and to
Lok Ching, on the very borders of Hunan. The growth of the
Church was not without an occasional set-back. Time and
again the spirit of resentment was roused as the people saw
their own rulers helpless against the aggression of foreigners.
During the war with France the Mission premises at Ying Tak
were wrecked, and the same thing occurred at Shiuchow
in 1885. In the last-named city the unearthing of human
skeletons while the foundations of the new hospital were being
digged led to the cessation of the work, to the great disappoint
ment of Roderick Macdonald. In 1895 the same spirit of
vexation and unrest reappeared when China was defeated by
Japan, and revolution in Canton was prevented only by the
timely discovery of the plot, and by the execution of its pro
moters. During the Boxer outrages the government of Canton
was in the strong hands of Li Hung Chang, who kept the
turbulent element in that city under control. There was thus
little disturbance in Canton or in the Hakka prefecture, but
in Sunwui to the south-west of Canton the Missionaries had to
deplore the destruction of chapels and other Mission property.
In 1905 two Mission houses, occupied by Dewstoe and Robinson
in Shiuchow, were burned to the ground. The personal loss
to the Missionaries was very great, but greater still was their
disappointment at the destruction of hope which had never
been greater.

There was much disappointment, too, about this time over
the inadequate provision made for the North River Mission
both in men and material. As we have seen, this was by far
the most fertile part of the Canton field, and if adequate
buildings and an increase of staff could have been secured, a
very large Church might have been established in this district.
But the opportunity passed, and others pressed in and gathered
the harvest which our men had sown. In every one of our
Mission Districts, even where we have rejoiced over great
ingatherings, the same story is to be told. It is the story of
unaccepted opportunity ; of a ' great and effectual door '
flung open before Missionaries eager to enter, and of a Church
hesitating to bid them do so, deterred by the fear of insufficient

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 449

support on the part of its members. This failure to provide
for the work in China was realized when the Rev. Henry Haigh
visited that field as Secretary in 1912. The occasion was
critical in the history of a country distracted by foreign
invasion, and by internal and oft-recurring revolt. The
Boxer rising of 1900 was the latest convulsion of a nation
weakened by its own failure to profit by the advance of know
ledge, and also by the greed and corruption of its administrators.
It had become the facile prey of unscrupulous foreigners,
and was helpless to use the enormous natural advantages
which it possessed. In despair the Government proceeded to
launch, by way of imperial edict, one reform after another ;
but the evil had gone too far to be arrested by edict, and the
great revolution of 1912 swept the Manchu dynasty away and
set up a Republic in its place. One of the first acts of the
new Government was without parallel in the history of such
convulsions, and the world was startled to find the newly-
formed Government of China appealing to the Christian
Church on its behalf. This edict is so remarkable that it may
well find a place in our record :

Prayer is requested for the National Parliament now in session,
for the newly established Government, for the President yet to be
elected, for the Constitution of the Republic, that the Government may
be recognized by the Powers, that peace may reign within our country,
that strong, virtuous men may be elected to office, that the Government
may be established upon a strong foundation.

Upon receipt of this telegram you are requested to notify all Christian
Churches in your province that April 27, 1913, has been set aside as a
Day of Prayer for the Nation.

Let all take part.

It was just at the moment of this most moving appeal to the
Christian Church that Dr. Haigh made his secretarial visit to
China. In the year that preceded it our Missionaries had
baptized five hundred adult converts, and hope and expecta
tion rose to the highest point. Our Mission in the country
had then been in existence for more than sixty years, and the
Methodist Church was well established in the three Districts,
Canton, Wuchang, and Hunan. It might have been thought
that within that time the material basis of a new and more
vigorous enterprise would have been in position, and the
organization of workers been perfected, so that into the
29

450 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

ferment of the new life that had been evolved the Church
might have entered with power and grace in equal measure.
But as the result of this official visit the Committee awoke to
the fact that its work was on a scale far from adequate to the
need and the opportunity of the hour. Mission buildings were
insufficient and badly situated, while the stations were seriously
understaffed, and the Missionaries were so fully occupied by
ever-increasing tasks of administration that evangelistic work
was not attempted as it should have been. Further, the
long-continued neglect of educational work had led to the
inevitable penalty of a paucity of trained Chinese Ministers
and Catechists. At the very moment in which the Church
should have sent out its agents in every direction those agents
were not forthcoming. The reason for this is to be found in an
illuminating fact duly recorded in 1892. In that year the
first self-supporting Church in Canton was formed. There
was great and legitimate rejoicing over this event. It was
described as ' an important crisis in our history.' So it
undoubtedly was. It meant that even if the European
Missionary were withdrawn, there would remain established
in Canton an indigenous Methodist Church. But the report
goes on to declare that though Mr. Grainger Hargreaves was
doing a successful work in connexion with a training college
which he had inaugurated for Catechists and teachers, ' this
new departure was considered to be of such importance that
he was urged to leave this work, and to give himself to the
oversight of the Canton Circuits.' It was not realized that the
provision of pastoral and prophetic leadership in the indigenous
Church thus coming into being was of supreme importance,
and ought to have taken precedence of any other. The issue
of this action appears ten years afterwards in a letter written
by the Rev. W. Bridie. It exhibits a mind which is wise and
a heart which is infinitely concerned for the well-being of the
Church. In it he refers to the educational upheaval which
followed upon the Boxer outbreak. Then at last the eyes of
China were opened, and an extraordinary demand for education
on modern lines made itself heard in all the eighteen provinces
of China. In the schools and colleges set up by the Government
in answer to this demand there was an avowed intention to
exclude Christianity, and not only was the Christian student
denied the opportunity of fitting himself to take part in the

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 451

life and work of the new China thus coming into existence,1 but
the Church was unable to reach the thousands of students who
were to be the leaders of the new order.

The close oi Piercy's administration was marred by the
clash of strong minds in disagreement, and with a considerable
amount of discord in consequence. Piercy had returned to
England after the death of Mrs. Piercy in 1878, but sailed
again for Canton in 1879. His own health was far from satis
factory, and in this extended period of his chairmanship he
failed to take his colleagues sufficiently into consideration.
In the matter of appointments to Circuits he was unable to
secure the consent of other members of the Synod. It was
thought by most of these that he ought to reside in Fatshan,
but he held that he could best administer the affairs of the
District if he remained in Canton. He secured a measure of
support from the Secretaries in London, but only at the cost
of estranging his brethren on the field, and destroying the
concord desirable everywhere, but never anywhere more than
on the Mission Field. Difficulties also arose in connexion
with Selby's attitude to the Consular authorities. The latter
resented the action taken with reference to a riot in which
he and Marris had nearly lost their lives, and this led to a
refusal to grant to Selby the passport necessary to enable him
to travel from Canton to other cities. Selby evaded this
difficulty by spending his last years in China at Shiuchow
without returning to Canton ; but when Piercy, acting as
Chairman, sought to intervene between the Missionary and the
Consul, he took a line of action which provoked Selby still
further, and brought him into conflict with the London
Secretaries. Selby's pen was mordant, and many things which
he wrote to the Consul, to his Chairman, and to the Secretaries
bit deeply into the feelings of sensitive men. It must be
confessed that the staff of the Canton District was far from
harmonious during the early 'eighties, and it was not until
both Selby and Piercy returned to England in 1882 that peace
and concord returned. The services of two able and experienced
Missionaries were thus lost to the District. Selby had qualities
of mind and heart peculiarly adapted to the requirements

1 In Government colleges all students were required on fixed days in each month
to worship the tablet of Confucius — an act in which, of course, no Christian could
join.

452 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

of our work in China. His Life of Christ in Chinese was an
able work, and is still being used as a text-book. His convic
tions, always strongly held, were sometimes expressed in a
manner far from conciliatory, and this often gave rise to great
vexation of spirit. But of his devotion to the work of an
evangelist to the Chinese there could be no question. The
intensity of his spirit appeared in that as in other things,
and his name will be remembered as that of the founder of
the North River Mission. Neither Piercy nor Selby returned
to China. The former found congenial work among the
Chinese in the Port of London, and continued to preach to
them until his death in 1913 ; the latter speedily became known
far beyond the boundaries of the Methodist Church for the
excellence of the religious literature which he published.

The same year in which these two returned to England saw
also the return of the Rev. G. Marris, whose health was so
seriously affected that he could no longer remain in China.
The Canton staff was sadly depleted, and when Dr. Wenyon
succeeded to the Chairmanship, the District, so far as minis
terial efficiency is concerned, was far from being in a satis
factory condition. But the Gospel still made its appeal to
the hearts of the Chinese, and better days were close at hand.
At that time Bone and Masters were in Canton, Hargreaves
and Tope in the North River Mission, and Wenyon alone in
Fatshan. This was a small staff for a District capable of
indefinite expansion. Ten years later we find that within
that period the Revs. William Bridie, H. J. Parker, and Dr.
Macdonald had been sent out, but by the close of the decade
Masters had returned to England, and Bridie was on furlough,
so that Dr. Macdonald was the only addition to the working
staff, and he had been sent out for special work. Passing on to
the close of the following decade in 1903, we find Dr. W. J.
Webb Anderson in Dr. Wenyon's hospital at Fatshan ; Parker
and Hargreaves had both returned to England, and to fill
the three vacancies the Revs. Edgar Dewstoe, C. A. Gaff, and
Thomas Robinson had joined the staff. H. E. Anderson was
' acting under the direction of the Chairman of the District,'
the Rev. C. Bone, both being stationed at Hong Kong. There
were thus nine Missionaries on the staff as compared with
eight in 1880, but two of these resided at Hong Kong, and
another, S. G. Tope, was on furlough, so that while the important

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 453

additions of two hospitals had been made, and the North
River Mission and the Kwang Si Mission had been taken up,
as well as the work in Hong Kong, the net increase to the staff
amounted to a single Missionary. It cannot be said that the
Committee in London had sufficiently strengthened the hands
of those who carried these extra burdens. In 1903 William
Bridie wrote strongly, pointing out the serious consequences
of being thus understaffed. Great opportunities had been
offered, but had passed unaccepted. In comparison with this
failure the case of the American Presbyterian Mission is cited.
Ten years before their membership stood at ninety, but within
the decade it had increased to nearly a thousand, while our
increase in the same period was one hundred. In 1893 the
Wesleyan Mission was numerically the strongest of all the
Churches at work in South China ; in 1903 our place was the
lowest of all. This comparison was made, not in the spirit
of envy, but by way of showing how much might have been
done if the workers had been adequately supported. But those
years, so critical for the Church in China, were precisely those
in which missionary enthusiasm in England was at a low
point. The effect of the unhappy ' Missionary Controversy '»
was still felt in the home Churches, with the sorrowful results
recorded by Mr. Bridie.

In no part of the Canton District was the want of a sufficient
staff more felt than in the newly opened work in the Sunwui
Circuit. That Circuit lay south-west of Canton, and contained
a population of two millions. A very large proportion of the
emigrants to Australia and America were drawn from the
people of this district. In the land of their temporary sojourn
they had found the Methodist Church, and under its Ministry
many of them had been led to Christ. When, on their return
to their own country, they hoped to find the same Ministry
awaiting them they were disappointed, and turned to the more
efficiently manned Church of the Presbyterians. Such men,
with the enlightenment which had come to them during their
absence from China, would have been a strength to our Church
in China, but the lack of pastoral oversight led them to seek a
spiritual home elsewhere. The Missionary who first came to
this district was the Rev. T. G. Selby, who visited it in 1872.
For many years the work was carried on almost entirely by

1 See Vol. i., chap. vii.

454 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

Chinese Catechists, the first of whom, Li Tsun Shi, afterwards
entered the ranks of the ordained Ministry. Largely through
the devoted labours of this Minister a Church was built up in
the chief town, Sunning, which numbered nearly a hundred
members in 1909. A considerable Circuit came into being, and
in the Centenary year its membership was returned at more
than four hundred — the largest aggregate of all the Circuits in
the District.

Another Circuit in which repatriated Chinese made
their influence felt was that of Heung Shan — the ' Fragrant
Mountain.' This district is about eighty miles distant
from Fatshan, and about thirty from Macao, where the Portu
guese have long had a colony in which our Missionaries were
glad to find a refuge when conditions in Canton forbade their
residence there. Many persons from this region had migrated
to Australia, and had returned impressed by the more civilized
conditions of life in that country. Heung Shan presently
became notable for two movements, one of which — the anti-
opium crusade — was moral, and the other, in favour of the
removal of the queue, was political, so that the ferment
introduced by contact with European nations was particularly
prominent in this district. In the year 1888 there seemed
to be a promising opening for beginning work in this region,
but for want of funds it was not accepted. In 1890, however,
a Chinese Christian of the name of San Foon, who had returned
from America, began to bear his witness for Christ. Mr. San
Foon carried on his work at his own expense ; schools were
opened, and a small Society was formed. In 1908 its members
numbered more than a hundred and forty.

The Methodist Church has from the first been the friend of
the British soldier, and has sought to minister to his needs.
It has been abundantly rewarded for such service, as the pages
of this History have shown. It was a soldier who received
George Piercy when he landed in Hong Kong, and the meeting
of the two men marked the beginning of the Methodist fellow
ship in the Far East. It is, therefore, all the more strange
that so many years passed before any attempt was made to
minister to the soldiers and sailors stationed in Hong Kong.
It was not until 1888 that the name of a European Missionary
appears in the Minutes as being appointed to this station.
For some years previously the familiar and melancholy entry

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 455

of ' One Wanted ' appeared in connexion with the name of
this great outpost of the British Empire, and the work had
been taken up in the first instance to meet the need, not of
Europeans, but of Chinese. In 1883 among the Chinese
employed on the island there were about a dozen men who had
been members of the Church in Canton and Fatshan. These
petitioned the Missionaries in Canton to undertake pastoral
work among them, promising to provide a suitable place of
worship. A Catechist was appointed, and as two or three
of the members were local preachers, it seemed likely that the
spiritual needs of this little group of Methodists would be
met if in addition to these workers one of the Missionaries in
Canton were to visit the Society every few months to administer
the Sacraments and to supervise the work. But in 1887 the
Rev. J. A. Turner, who had been in the Canton District two
years, was appointed to take charge of the Society, and on his
arrival in January, 1888, it became possible to undertake
regular work among the soldiers and sailors in the garrison.
Turner, however, remained in Hong Kong for only one year,
and on his removal the work was entrusted to the Rev. Leong-
on-Tong, one of the Chinese Ministers. In 1894 the Rev. W.
Musson was appointed to Hong Kong, and from that time the
work, both among the Chinese and the soldiers, was put on a
better footing. With the development of naval and commer
cial interests there was a large increase in the Chinese popula
tion, and the census of 1896 showed that there were two hundred
and thirty thousand on the island. These were quick to see
the advantage of education, and in 1897 there were more chil
dren in our Hong Kong schools than there were in all the other
Wesleyan schools in China.1 As many of these would one
day return to their homes on the mainland this work did
something to make good the deficiency in this branch of our
work in other parts of the District. Musson was followed by
the Rev. Charles Bone in 1900, by which time a suitable site
for a soldiers' and sailors' home had been secured. The home
was opened in 1901. Only those who realize the moral atmos
phere of the East will understand the value of such an institu
tion. Many an English lad has been brought to Christ in the
Hong Kong home, and has found his faith to be also his

1 In the Canton schools there were one hundred and seventy-three children in
the schools as against five hundred in Hong Kong,

456 CANTON . A BARRED ENTRANCE

victory. It was notable, too, that the interest of the men in
missionary service grew with their devotion to their Lord and
Master. Bone was still in Hong Kong when the Centenary
year came. Under his wise and loving care the two branches
of the work developed, until in 1913 there were eighty-two
members on the English side and one hundred and ninety-two
on the Chinese.

Early in the new century the Fatshan Circuit was divided,
and the pastoral care of the new section — the Man Cheung Sha
Circuit — was put under the oversight of Dr. Webb Anderson,
who thus added no slight burden to that which he was already
carrying in the hospital. During the first decade of the century
the prospect of immediate and rapid growth was given to the
Church, and hope passed into the confidence of expectation.
The murder of Dr. Roderick Macdonald1 was a terrible blow
to a Church which was at last beginning to move rapidly to
its goal. Of that event, and of the dislocation in the medical
service that followed it, we have written later. The con
sequence in Fatshan was that Dr. Webb Anderson was left
alone in that city to carry on both his work in the hospital
and the general administration of the Church. A further
disaster followed in the form of a terrible flood, which brought
death into many homes. Altogether 1907 was a sad and
difficult year for the Missionary at work in the Canton District.
Towards its close, however, a great Conference held in Shanghai
restored the hope that had been so sadly dashed. On Sept
ember 4, in the year 1807, the first Protestant Missionary in the
person of Robert Morison had landed in China, and it was
resolved to celebrate the centenary of that memorable day by
a Conference, in which all Churches should be represented.
No less than eleven hundred representatives assembled in
Shanghai. Nearly seven hundred of these had come from
twenty-five different countries, all pledged to win China for
Christ, and the remainder consisted of delegates from the
different Churches at work in China. The contrast between
the picture of that heroic figure, the sole witness of the Protest
ant Church, landing at Canton, and the great assembly in
Shanghai was an indication of the growth of the Church in the
hundred years. But an even more impressive celebration of
Morison's landing in China was held in Canton, where by a

» See p. 515-

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 457

purely Native impulse Chinese Christians numbering many
thousands assembled to commemorate a day fraught with such
gracious issues for their country. The Rev. C. Bone, describing
this unique festival, said, ' No such gatherings have ever been
held in China before ; nothing just like them can ever be
celebrated again.'

During the last six years preceding the Centenary the Canton
District showed that a great harvest might be gathered in a
field that had often seemed hard to win. The years were not
without political unrest and disturbance. During the year
1911 a revolution resulted in the overthrow of the Tartar
Government and the setting up of a Republic in its place. The
hope of reformation filled the minds and hearts of the people,
and members of the Christian Church became prominent in
the new social order. But the struggle for a more popular
government gave occasion to lawless persons, and members of
secret societies at once became active. Robbery and violence
were rife, and the streets of Canton were more than once swept
with rifle fire in the endeavour to suppress disorderly gangs.
Missionaries in Canton had twice to leave their homes, and
ladies and children were sent away from Wuchow, while the
staff at Shiuchow, though ordered to leave the place, were
for weeks unable to start. In the providence of God no
Missionaries were injured, but obviously the interruption to
their work was grievous to men who were at last beginning to
reap the field so long in coming to harvest. Happily the
Church continued to grow, and the storm meant a deeper
rooting. The staff of Missionaries had never been stronger,
and the spirit of unity and concord afforded a happy contrast
with that of former times. The Methodist Church in the
Canton District had never known happier days. The Chair
man, the Rev. Charles Bone, resided at Hong Kong, and with
the exception of a few months spent on furlough was the sole
administrator of the Church during the period. The medical
staff was particularly strong. Drs. Webb Anderson and
Philip Rees were able to continue at work, carrying most of
the time an excessive burden, and in the course of the period
under review they were joined by Drs. A. W. Hooker, B. R.
Vickers, W. B. Walmsley, R. P. Hadden, and P. V. Early.
Other Missionaries who joined the staff were R. Ellison (1906),
A. A. Baker (1910), J. R. Temple (1911), and C. C. Marris

458 CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE

(1913), while E. Dewstoe, S. G. Tope, C. A. Gaff, T. W. Scholes,
H. E. Anderson, R. Hutchinson, and T. Robinson, who were
already on the field in 1906, maintained a service unbroken
except for furloughs, during which they went about among
the home Churches declaring the coming of a kingdom not of
this earth to a distracted and suffering people. The European
staff was supplemented by a Chinese staff of six Ministers and
forty- two Catechists. At last the District was able to rejoice
in a ministerial strength that was fairly adequate to needs.
During the seven years the membership of the Church in
creased from two thousand one hundred to two thousand six
hundred.

One great result of Dr. Haigh's visit to China was the further
reinforcement of the staff of the three Districts. Each branch
of the service — evangelistic, medical, and educational —
received in each District an additional worker, and the
' Methodist Eleven ' sailed for China in the autumn of the
Centenary year. The year which witnessed the formation of
the Wesleyan Missionary Society could have received no more
fitting celebration. The Centenary celebrations in Canton
were, as elsewhere, the occasion of spiritual blessing to the
Church. To the different congregations, small in number,
poor in this world's goods, and often socially despised, there
was given the consciousness of a great and worthy Church life.
Its members felt that they were citizens of no mean city. The
review of the history of a hundred years revealed to them that
the hand of God was upon them for good. Thanksgiving and
gratitude were awakened, and found expression in many a
gift for the furtherance of the work of God. Some of those
gifts were small — the world would say ' contemptible ' — but
they were the symbols of what the world can never measure or
estimate — the love of the human heart for the Christ who had
brought them out of darkness into marvellous light. While
that love remains in the Chinese heart, whatever the con
vulsions of social and political life may be, the future of the
Christian Church in China is assured.

The Methodist Church entered China by way of Canton, and
it was not an easy way. The door was a reluctant door, and
it moved with difficulty on its rusty hinges. Within were
barriers innumerable to keep out the foreigner and his teaching.
Only love's loyalty in surrender and persistence in service could

CANTON : A BARRED ENTRANCE 459

ever have won a way through. But that way was won at last,
and in all the throes which proclaim the birth of a great nation
into newness of life, the secret of that life is to be found in
Canton. It seems that China, like other countries, must move
through strife and conflict into peace and unity, but in all the
political convulsions which we witness to-day the great and
progressive city of the South will have its own word to say, and
in that deciding utterance there will be somewhere a whisper of
Christ.

Ill

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

Josiah Cox — Hankow — William Scarborough and David Hill —
Christian Literature — David Hill's Furlough and its Consequences —
Hunan — The Martyrdom of William Argent — The Passing of David
Hill — The War with Japan — The Boxer Rising — Subsequent Develop
ments.

THE first ten years of the Methodist Mission in China had been
spent in securing a foothold in Canton, and in consolidating
the work begun in that city, but with the opening of the new
treaty-ports, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of
Tientsin, the time came for an extension which was to open up
a far more fruitful sphere of Christian service, and the Mis
sionary to whom it fell to enter the new field was Josiah Cox.
In 1857 he had written to the Committee in London announcing
his intention of returning to England for the purpose of retire
ment and prayer. Even then the hand of God was upon him,
though he knew not where that guiding hand was to lead him,
and he felt the need of quiet preparation for the clearer indica
tion which was to come. While in Canton he had been thrown
into intimate association with Hung Jin, ' the Shield King/
who was the brother of Hung Hsin Ts'uan, the leader in the
Tai-ping rebellion. Cox had lived with the Shield King for
four months, and there is little doubt that during the time
they spent together Hung Jin had been drawn very near to
Christ, though even then Cox had detected in Hm a certain
lack of judgement and an instability of character which after
wards proved to be his ruin. The friendship, however, had
important results for Cox, as we shall see. In 1860 Cox was in
England, where he exerted a strong influence in favour of the
new Mission to China. At the ' Breakfast Meeting ' of 1861
he deli vered a speech full of zeal and of the finest missionary
feeling. In the course of his address he produced a great
sensation by holding up before his audience a square of vellow

460

WUCHANG LOVE'S EMBASSY 461

silk covered with Chinese characters, which had been put into
his hands that veiy morning.

It was a letter from Hung Jin, who was then at Nanking,
and the writer expressed the hope that his position in that city
would be the means of furthering the cause of Christ in China.
He closed his letter with an invitation to Cox to join him in
preaching the Gospel. It must be borne in mind that at that
time there was still prevalent in England the hope that the
Tai-ping movement would lead to a distinctly Christian result
in China. The invitation from the Shield King, thus dramatic
ally presented to the Methodist Church, naturally greatly
increased that hope. It was never fulfilled. But the effect
of the invitation was to make clear to Cox the way in which he
was to go, and within a few months he was on his way to
Nanking. A long account of an interview between Cox and
the Shield King appeared in the Watchman early in 1862, and
from this it appears that whatever hope Cox may have enter
tained with reference to the Tai-pings was completely dissipa
ted. Place and power, with unlimited opportunities for self-
indulgence, had entirely destroyed whatever of Christian
feeling had led to the inditing of the famous letter of invitation.
The Shield King refused to grant permission for the Missionary
to preach in Nanking on the plea that if they contested the
religious position of his brother — the Heavenly King — they
might suffer even death at the hands of his followers. Cox
sums up his impressions of the whole movement as follows :

I did not apprehend that on a nearer view of these insurgents they
would appear to my judgement so bereft of hopeful elements. I
certainly fail to discover among them at present any party which
promises to be capable of administering a government, and I can only
regard them as marauding hordes, dreaded by all classes, save a portion
of the very vilest of the people, whose only business is to plunder, and
who carry calamities without hope of ameli oration wherever they roam.

Idolatry, opium smoking, and gambling were strictly forbidden
among the insurgents, and this was something to the good ; but
it would appear that seven devils worse than the first had
entered into the empty house. In any case, it was clear that
Cox would not be allowed to preach in Nanking, and he there
fore went on to Ningpo, where his impressions of the movement
were confirmed. He returned at length to Shanghai, quite

462 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

convinced that the Tai-ping movement was far from favourable
to the promulgation of the Christian faith.

In discussing this visit of Cox to the insurgents Piercy had
called the attention of the Committee to what he considered a
far more promising field of labour. His letter is dated June,
1 86 1, and in it there appears the first mention of Hankow.

On March i, 1862, Josiah Cox wrote his first letter from
Hankow. To this letter we shall return presently, but pause
for a moment to indicate what he himself describes as the
commencement of the Mission to Central China :

Climbing one day to the top of the Tortoise Hill in Hanyang I
looked down on the ancient city of Hanyang just rising from the
desolations of the Tai-ping war; on the far stretching walls of Wuchang,
a former capital of the Empire, and now the seat of the provincial
Government ; and on Hankow, a hive of six or seven hundred thousand
people ; while in the fourth direction, and as far as the eye could see,
were graves. The sight of these vast multitudes, and the thought of
their spiritual darkness, stirred my spirit and led me to pray. In that
prayer was the commencement of this Mission.

It may be that Josiah Cox did not trace his noble emotion to its
source, but there can be no question of its origin, for we read
how ' Jesus saw a great multitude, and He had compassion
on them, for they were as sheep not having a shepherd, and
He began to teach them many things.' The spirit of Jesus
had been given to His servant.

Of all the centres of human life in which the Christian Mis
sionary has appeared, Hankow, with its adjacent cities of
Wuchang and Hanyang, is unique. When the traveller has
arrived at Shanghai, in the delta of the Yangtsekiang, a river
journey of six hundred miles awaits him before he arrives at
the confluence of the Han with the mighty stream on which he
is travelling ; and the Han, though so much smaller than the
Yangtsekiang, is navigable for more than a thousand miles.
Hankow is situated on the north bank of the Yangtse, and on
the opposite bank, more than a mile across, is the city of
Wuchang. On the south of the river Han is Hanyang, smaller
than its two sister cities, but destined to become a great
industrial centre, Hankow being one of the greatest emporiums
of trade in the world, and Wuchang claiming pre-eminence as
a city of literati. The three cities form the great nerve-
centre of the Chinese Empire, and the political, commercial,

WUCHANG : LOVE S EMBASSY 463

and intellectual interchange between this centre and its far-
flung circumference is incessant. The Viceroy of two provinces
— Hupeh and Hunan — has his capital in Wuchang, where he
rules over a population of fifty-five millions. This central
position is about to be connected by railway with both Pekin
and Canton. The line of communication crossing the incom
parable waterway formed by the two rivers will indefinitely
increase the significance of the three cities. From every
point of view — in position, in importance, and in function —
they form the heart of the Empire.

Josiali Cox was not the first Missionary to claim this mighty
heart for Christ. That honour falls to the Rev. Griffith John
and his colleague, the Rev. R. Wilson, both of them Missionaries
of the London Missionary Society. They had arrived in
Hankow in iS6i, and when, a year after, Cox appeared on the
scene he received from them the most generous and cordial
welcome. In the letter written by Cox, to which reference
has already been made, he writes as follows :

I cannot think it possible to find a more promising or inviting field
of labour for the location of a strong Mission than meets me here.
Indeed, it stirs me mightily to think of the masses centred here in the
heart of the Empire, and the ease with which the commercial operations
extend hence to even.- part of the land. We must accompany these
far and wide ramified influences of trade with some rays and influences
of the pure truth of our Saviour God. A strong desire is upon me
to see a Mission commenced here this year. I have written for three
men, but after seeing the great work before us I must ask for six. If
the Church could be moved to take up this imperatively necessary
Mission heartily, you could perhaps find men, and good true men, at
the next Conference. We might plant two of them in Wuchang, two
in Hanyang, and two in Kiu Kiang, to operate in Hankow immediately
on their arrival. I mention Kiu Kiang because of the importance of
that city and the facility with which the clusters of towns and cities
round the Poyang Lake can be reached from thence.

For some months, until he was able to build a house in
Hankow, Cox enjoyed the generous hospitality of his brethren
in the L.M.S., but that generosity was to have a more signal
expression. Cox spoke Cantonese, and that dialect was almost
unintelligible in the central pro vinces . It thus became necessary
for him to learn Mandarin, and on his consulting Griffith
John as to finding some one who would be at once his teacher
and his colleague in the work of preaching, the latter at once

464 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

offered him the services of Chu Sao Ngan. This was no small
gift. Mr. Chu was the first convert of Griffith John in Hupeh,
and as such was dear to the heart of his father in the Gospel.
But, however costly the gift, it was freely given, and under this
guidance Cox made rapid progress in the new dialect. Mr.
Chu also learned much from his pupil, and in due course he was
ordained the first Minister of the Wesleyan Church in China.
For twenty-four years he exercised a most fruitful ministry in
Wuchang, where the Church grew into beauty and strength
under his gracious ministry. When at last he died, in 1899,
the following record was duly inscribed in the Minutes of
Conference (1900) :

As a Preacher he had no peer in the ranks of the Chinese Church in
Central China. His power of illustration, especially, was unrivalled.
He made a wide and varied reading pay tribute to his congregations ;
Christian magazine or Confucian classic alike had to render up its store
of things new and old to this wise householder, who verily had a treasury
of such riches. He earned the unfeigned respect of his European
colleagues by a blameless life and unimpeachable integrity.

Such an ' earnest ' of the Christian Ministry in China left
nothing to be desired.

We have seen that before the Committee was prepared to
move in China there was a feeling in the Church that a strong
Mission in that country should be undertaken. That feeling
was intensified during the furlough of Josiah Cox, and he had
returned to China strengthened by the support of such leaders
as WTilliam Arthur on the ministerial side and Sir Francis
Lycett among the laity. These had discussed with Cox the
desirability of an extension in Central China, and though
Hankow was not mentioned until Cox had definitely given
up the idea of working in conformity with the Tai-ping move
ment, their approval of his decision was secured beforehand,
and he enjoyed their strong and enthusiastic support. The
devastation wrought by the insurgents had brought much
vacant land into the market, and Cox was eager to seize the
opportunity of acquiring a suitable site for Mission premises.
The occasion was one in which to wait for the previous consent
of the Committee would have meant the missing of an oppor
tunity which might be many years in returning. Cox there
fore anticipated consent ; he obtained a draft on the Committee

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 465

through the kindness of a British merchant and purchased
a plot of land. In doing this Cox was aware that he was
breaking the rule of his Society, and his conscientiousness and
sensitive nature are revealed in a letter in which he almost
piteously entreats the Committee to endorse his action and
to honour his draft. ' Please honour that draft,' he wrote,
' nor suffer the name of your Missionary to be bandied about
in connexion with a dishonoured bill.' His relief was intense
when he at last received from the Secretaries a letter written
by the Rev. William Arthur. It was such a letter as that
Minister, pre-eminent in kindliness, courtesy, and sympathy,
would write. Mr. Arthur bade him dismiss all thought of a
dishonoured bill, and said :

We trust you not to spend a single dollar of the Society's money
unnecessarily, and I pray that the ground you have secured in that
vast city may remain while the world stands a heritage of the Church,
and become the site of many an event which angels will rejoice over,
and men unborn will weep to see.

That prayer has already been answered ; but a larger answer
yet will one day be given. Cox was immensely relieved, and
proceeded to outline his scheme for the development of the
Mission. His letter, dated March 31, 1862, is a remarkable
production. There are few documents in the archives of the
Mission House which reveal a truer statesmanship, a deeper
insight into the essentials of missionary enterprise in China,
or a truer consecration to the Master whom he served. After
making a definite proposal that Hankow should be the centre
of the new Mission, he enlarges upon the advantages which it
offers. He then lays before the Committee the appointments
which he considers necessary. In addition to the purely
evangelistic work, which he rightly places in the first order, he
would provide for both educational and medical work, and
for the efficient occupation of the three towns he asks the
Committee to send out seven men. He shows his appreciation
of the field before him by asking that ' only first-class men '
should be sent. His own interpretation of that much-abused
term ' a first-class man ' is worth considering — ' a brother wise
and gifted to undertake a service as noble and important as
perhaps the Methodist Church ever offered her Ministers ; a
little experience, a temper and a character that shall unite his
30

466 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

colleagues to him in love ; mental power to grapple with the
language ; and these all sanctified by the pure love of Christ.'
These words may stand as a description of the ideal Missionary,
and if the Secretaries asked themselves where such a one could
be found, God had His answer to give. He gave it in David

Hill.

Cox then passes to consider the financial question, and
presents the Committee with a detailed statement of expenses
that would be involved. He claims for himself the humble
position of ' a sort of pioneer for abler men.' The whole state
ment was well thought out, and its delineation reveals the line
of advance for years to come. But, most of all, the heart and
mind of a true Missionary of Jesus Christ are before us as we
read the masterly plan of a great and efficient Mission. If the
Church at home could have risen to this ideal, the success which
we shall presently record would have seemed insignificant by
the side of that which might have been.

In 1863 building operations were sufficiently advanced for
Cox to move into the first Mission house in Central China, and
by that time he had the joy of baptizing his first convert. In
the following year he welcomed his first colleague, and it is
significant that that colleague was a medical Missionary— Dr.
F. Porter Smith, who served in Hankow for six years. Medical
work in China has proved to be of such importance that it will
be necessary for us to describe its inception and subsequent
development in a separate chapter of the History. We shall,
therefore, not do more here than record his arrival. He was
followed in 1865 by two notable Missionaries— the Revs.
William Scarborough and David Hill. It now became possible
to begin work on a more efficient scale, though it was not until
1868 that any further addition was made to the staff, and Cox's
advice that seven men should be sent out remained ' a counsel
of perfection,' but the men who now joined him were men after
his own heart, and when in 1868 the Rev. F. P. Napier was
added to the list, the new Mission, as far as quality and calibre
are concerned, was most admirably staffed.

In 1864 William Scarborough and David Hill were ordained
in the city of York, and were destined for the service of Christ
in China. The appointment was fraught with issues which
only the eye of faith could then have visualized. In the great
city to which they were appointed few of the Chinese had,

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 467

up to that time, confessed Christ in baptism. They would
have to learn a language of peculiar difficulty before they would
be able to assure men of the love which would win them to that
confession. Around them would surge and seethe great tides
of human life, apparently wholly irresponsive to the truth they
were being sent to proclaim. They would be met on their
arrival with hostility to themselves as barbarians whose ap
propriate epithet was that of ' devils,' and when China pre
fixed to that epithet the word ' foreign/ then it was understood
by all that her attitude to these new teachers was contemptuous
as well as hostile. But the two young men taking their vows in
the crowded chapel were destined to see the birth and the
growth of a Christian Church where such a thing might have
seemed to many an idle dream. Contempt was to be displaced
by boundless confidence, and hatred was to be changed into
love, and the one secret of this amazing change stood in the
consecration of these men to Jesus Christ. Infinite weakness
challenged infinite strength— and won, for it was the weakness
of those who were content to be less than nothing that Christ
might be all in all. William Scarborough accomplished a great
work in China, and his name is held in great and deserved
honour, but David Hill was, in the providence of God, to win the
hearts of the Chinese for Christ as few men have ever done. At
first it seemed as though his ministry in China would be brief.
His health suffered, and he was obliged to seek recovery by a
sea voyage, first to Canton and then, a few months after, to
Japan. But when the period of acclimatization was safely
passed he was able to endure every form of physical fatigue
and discomfort until men of far more robust physique marvelled
at him. The spirit of the man made him triumphant over
disabilities which at one time threatened disaster. He had at
his command considerable financial resources, but what to
many might have been the cause of weakness was transformed
by his spirit into strength. He regarded wealth as an instru
ment to be used in his Master's service, and never was steward
more conscientious in using aright that which he held on trust.
His governing motive is clearly seen in those ' Principles to
guide me ;n Mission WTork ' which were found in an old note
book, and which appear in the memoir of his life.1 The sixth
principle reads as follows :

1 David Hill, an Apostle to the Chinese, by the Rev. W. T. A. Barber, D.D.

468 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

Let evangelistic work be accompanied by benevolent activity to
the physical wants of men so long as I have it in my power to do so.
Go on spending and being spent for others as God opens my way, even
to the disposal of all personal property. Let me do all I can for the
bodies and souls of men, remembering that first that which is natural
and then that which is spiritual is generally the order of God.

Dr. Barber goes on to describe how this principle was carried
out :

He lived on the absolute minimum of need, often at the rate of
two or three pence a day, giving all his income and much of his capital
to the work. He recognized the perils of gathering around him those
who would come for the loaves and fishes, but he deliberately took the
risk, considering that he was following in Christ's steps and manifesting
the Christ-life.1

His first sphere of work was found in Wuchang, where he occupied
a small house, the largest room of which was used as a preaching-
hall. After five years he had gathered a Church of sixteen
members, and a Mission house and chapel were built on the
main street. On the return of Josiah Cox from furlough he
took charge of the work in Wuchang, and David Hill removed
to Wusueh, a hundred and twenty miles down the river, where
certain inquirers had been found at Kwangtsi, twenty miles
farther inland. For the next six years David Hill lived at
Wusueh, itinerating through the villages and preaching the
Gospel. Towards the close of 1877 the civilized world was
shocked by accounts of the famine in Shansi. The worst
features of such calamities were frequent, and the death-rate in
a single year was seventy- three per cent, of the population.
Hill was one of the first to enter the stricken province, taking
with him a large sum of money in the hope of using it to relieve
the starving people. The centre from which he worked was
Ping Yang, and it was here that he met the Chinese scholar,
known, through the charming pages of Mrs. Howard Taylor,
as ' Pastor Hsi.' The influence of the Christian life and
character of David Hill culminated at last in the surrender to
Christ of one who came as near to the reproduction of the life of
Jesus as mortal man may hope to come. When the time came
for David Hill to return from Shansi to Central China, the
separation of these two kindred disciples of Christ was costly

1 op. cit., p. 36.

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 469

to them both. This was in 1880, and the following year Hill
was in England for a very necessary furlough. In the Report
of 1880 it is stated that the Missionary Committee contemplated
adding Ping Yang to the stations of the Central China Mission.
It was, however, a wise counsel by which it was decided to
leave the promising work begun in that province to the China
Inland Mission, and to concentrate upon districts nearer to the
central Mission in Hankow. David Hill returned to Hankow
in 1882.

Meantime his colleagues had been working each in his own
way, though all had found that the most effective work was
done by itinerating among the villages and towns. Scar
borough writes with great regret of the official intimation that
protection could not be assured to any Englishman outside
the treaty-ports. Not only so, but regulations were also
passed that foreign purchasers of land must first acquaint local
Mandarins of their intention before official sanction would be
given to the transaction. As the Mandarins were almost
certain to raise objections to their obtaining property where it
was likely to be of use to the Mission, this enactment meant
the relegation to back streets of all preaching-centres, thus
severely limiting the opportunities of the Missionaries. Even
in Wuchang David Hill found great difficulty in obtaining
possession of a site for which he had already paid. Fifteen
months passed before he was able to build. But the delay
was really of advantage, for in December, 1887, we find him
rejoicing that the new chapel had not been built, since it would
certainly have been destroyed in the disaster which fell upon
Wuchang when a hundred tons of gunpowder were exploded
by accident. So great was the violence of the explosion that
it was felt a hundred and fifty miles away, where it was thought
that an earthquake had occurred. When at last the chapel and
Mission house had been built, there was great relief, for if it had
been longer delayed the Rev. F. P. Napier would have been
obliged to leave Wuchang for want of a suitable residence.

Josiah Cox excelled — as he himself had felt — as a pioneer.
His eager spirit gave him no rest. He was continually on the
look-out for the opportunity of extending the range of mis
sionary activity. In 1867 he determined to open a new station
at Kiu Kiang, where he had bought a site of four acres. In
doing this he failed to carry the convictions of his colleagues

470 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

as to the desirability of this extension, and the Committee in
London considered that the wiser policy was to concentrate
on the three cities rather than to go further afield. By this
time the first flush of enthusiasm for the China Mission had
passed, and the Committee was again feeling the necessity of
caution in the expenditure of money. Cox was greatly dis
appointed, but in 1873 work was begun in Kwangtsi, a district
on the eastern border of the Hupeh province, and in the fol
lowing year Wusueh and Kwangtsi appear on the Minutes
of the Society. Kwrangtsi is one of the sixty-five counties of
Hupeh, and the capital of the county — of the same name — had
a population of fifteen thousand, with a large village population
in its vicinity. Wusueh, however, is a more important town,
serving as the river port of Kwangtsi, and having a population
of fifty thousand. In the last-named city the American
Methodist Episcopal Church had been at work since 1870, and
one of our colporteurs had been moving about in Kwangtsi
since 1872. In the following year by mutual consent the
American Methodists handed over their work to our Society,
and the two towns were constituted a ' Circuit.' The charge
of the new field was handed over to David Hill, having as his
colleague the Rev. Joseph Race, who had been sent to rein
force the Hankow staff. Josiah Cox removed to Wuchang with
the Rev. J. W. Brewer — another new arrival — and William
Scarborough remained at Hankow. By this time the District
had lost the service of Dr. Porter Smith, and the Rev. F. P.
Napier, whose wife had died, and who had himself been brought
to death's door, was obliged to return to England. A still
more serious depletion of the staff took place in 1874, when
the Chairman — Josiah Cox — was so stricken down with illness
that he was obliged to return to England and to seek complete
rest in retirement from the active work of the Ministry. Happily
he recovered sufficiently to resume work in 1876, but his
service in China had closed. To this faithful steward of the
mysteries of God it was given to see, before he left China, at
least the birth of the Christian Church where, when he first
arrived in the country, there was only one follower of
Christ among the Chinese. The total membership in Hankow,
Wuchang, and the Kwangtsi Circuit then amounted to one
hundred and thirty-nine, with more than that number on
trial for admission into the Church.

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 471

Cox was followed in the Chairmanship by William Scar
borough, who worthily upheld the tradition he then received.
During the ten years of his administration there was no great
increase in the membership of the Church, but there was an
extensive development in missionary activity, and to meet the
need of the new stations the decade saw the beginning of an
indigenous Ministry. For in the Minutes of 1876 the name
of Chu Sao Ngan appears, with the designation of ' Chinese
Missionary.' Of this forerunner of a great company of Chinese
Ministers we have already written. He was ordained to the
full ministerial position in 1881. There were also welcome
reinforcements from England, but unfortunately the close
of the decade witnessed a grievous depletion owing to sickness
and death. The strength of the District at the beginning of
the decade allowed Scarborough to make preparations for the
development of both medical and educational work, though
it was not until the regime of his successor that these schemes
were realized.

The hopes with which the work in Kwangtsi and Wusueh
was begun were some time in reaching fulfilment. In 1874
the large number of members on probation was accounted for
by those who were taken over from the American Methodists
when this sphere of operations passed into the care of our
Missionaries. After a while, when the novelty of the Mission
had worn away, many of these withdrew from our fellowship,
but their withdrawal left the Church stronger than it had been
before, and David Hill could point to several indications of an
approaching awakening. Events were to prove that he had
rightly read the signs of the times. It is not a matter for
surprise that the Chinese were at first slow to enter the Christian
Church. Though they were not hindered by the rigorous law
of caste which obtained in India, there was a fierce opposition
from their neighbours to any such act on the part of an indivi
dual. That opposition was open in expression and most deter
mined in character. It was not only because objection was
raised to his change of faith and practice, but specially because
his entering the Christian Church made him by treaty-right
exempt from the payment of all taxes connected with
idolatrous worship in the temples and public processions in
the streets. As the sum-total of expenses incurred by these
was fixed at a certain amount for each village and for each

472 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

street, the share of any individual claiming exemption fell upon
his neighbours, who strongly resented the additional burden.

The removal of suspicion, too, was slow in process, and
among people who were both superstitious and bigoted, and
who had in addition their extraordinary national vanity
reinforced by complete ignorance of other nations, this was
only to be expected. It was finally broken down by the tender
and disinterested service of doctors and nurses in the hospitals,
but the time for that was not yet. The next best thing avail
able was to move about freely among the people, and
evangelistic tours, entailing much discomfort and a certain
amount of peril, were freely undertaken. The year 1875
brought the Rev. A. W. Nightingale to Hankow, and he was
followed during the next year by the Revs. W. S. Tomlinson
and William Bramfitt, and in 1879 by the Rev. J. S. Fordham.

In 1880 David Hill had returned from Shansi deeply
impressed with the value of Christian literature as an
evangelistic agency. Examinations held by the Government
in the great provincial centres were attended by thousands
of graduates, whose preferment depended upon their success
in such tests, and Missionaries had adopted the plan of present
ing each candidate with Scripture portions or small treatises
on some aspect or other of the Christian faith. In Ping Yang,
during the time of the great famine, prizes were offered for
the best essays on subjects chosen, and it was the winning of
one of these which brought David Hill and Mr. Hsi into the
association which had so happy an issue. It is not to be
wondered at that David Hill, on his return, set himself to
develop this branch of work. The co-operation of the British
and Foreign Bible Society and of the Religious Tract Society
was assured beforehand, and with their help a Central China
Tract Society, with its head quarters in Hankow, was formed.
This particular method of Christian propaganda from this time
onward was diligently followed, and proved most fruitful in
securing a thoughtful examination of the Christian position,
leading in many instances to a confession of Christ. Some
times the influx of candidates for examination from remote
parts of the province led to anti-Christian demonstrations,
which were not without peril to Native Christians as well as
to Missionaries. An instance of this occurred in 1878, when
Messrs. Brewer and Nightingale were assaulted and severely

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 473

injured. It is significant of much that the people of Wuchang
took no part in that attack, and that the authorities did their
best to seek out and punish the ringleaders. Later on a similar
outburst took place at Teian, when David Hill was seriously
hurt and the Mission premises were wrecked.

The 'eighties were marked by a grievous mortality in the
ranks of our workers. In 1880 the Rev. Joseph Race, who
had joined the staff in 1873, was taken away after a short
illness, and his colleagues were left to mourn the loss of a
beloved brother and an efficient fellow labourer. In 1883 the
Rev. W. S. Tomlinson was obliged to return to England on
account of the breakdown of his wife's health, and in the
following year the service of the Rev. A. W. Nightingale was
closed by death. In June, 1884, the wife of the Rev. William
Scarborough was taken suddenly ill and died, leaving a husband
disconsolate and a Mission sorely bereaved. Mrs. Scarborough
had won the hearts of the Chinese women by the sweetness of
her temper and the unselfishness of her service. Her husband
never recovered from the shock of her death, and in 1885 he
returned to England. The toll of death was not yet complete
in the sorely stricken District. The Rev. Joseph Bell had
entered the home Ministry, but in 1883 he was led to offer
himself for service in China. When it was found that the
funds of the Society would not permit the sending out of
another Missionary, he offered his service without official
remuneration or support, relying on the gifts of friends which
afforded a bare subsistence. But of him it might well be said,
' It was well that it was in thy heart.' After only two years
in the country his health failed, and an immediate return to
England became necessary. Within a few months of his
arrival in England he too was called to his reward. His
widow, who had been a wife for only six months, determined
to devote herself to the cause for which her husband had died.
She took up a course of nursing and dispensing, and then
returned to Hankow to serve in the women's hospital. There
we shall meet her again. All these losses occurred within the
brief space of five years, just when it seemed that the presence
of so many able and devoted men on the field might justify a
large development in evangelistic work. But the falling torch
was seized by ready and loyal hands. J. W. Brewer, Thomas
E. North, and William H. Watson were soon in Central China,

474 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

and these three men were spared to see the work of the Lord
prosper in their hands amazingly. In the pages that follow
their names will often be before us. The names of new stations
began to appear in the Minutes of Conference, with Catechists
to occupy the new centres until it should appear whether
there was any likelihood of permanent Churches being
established. Of these Hanyang and Teian were the most
promising.

In 1881 David Hill was on furlough in England, and few
Missionaries during the period of their rest — often no rest at
all — have been able to impress the Churches at home as he
did. The obvious sincerity of the man, added to the warmth
of his enthusiasm for China and the sane and balanced presen
tation of the work, touched the heart of the Methodist people.
In this service, as in that which he had rendered in China, he
was wholly consecrated to his Lord and Master. He lived in
an atmosphere of prayer, and this communion with God was
the secret spring of his advocacy in England as it was of his
service in China. He kindled a flame wherever he went, and
the Central China Mission was thenceforth assured of its place
in the affection and interest of the Methodist Church. It
would be difficult to say how many received their call to the
Mission field through David Hill. Dr. Barber1 says that
' almost all the recruits to Central China for the next ten years
were due directly or indirectly to his personal advocacy during
this visit.' Reference may be made to at least two of these.
Before David Hill left China for this memorable furlough it
was felt that a strong movement in the direction of educational
work should be made. The scheme proposed was elaborate.
It included, in addition to a day school in which Western
science and the English language should be taught, a boarding
school into which the more promising boys from day schools
in other parts of the District should be brought, and there
was also a department for the training of Catechists and
candidates for the Ministry. It was proposed that the institu
tion should be located in Wuchang. The Committee in
England had not been blind to this need. In 1878 it had
called attention to the fact that in the whole area covered by
the Mission there were only three schools containing not more
than fifty children, and in the Report for 1883 there occurs the

1 op. cit., p. 69.

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 475

entry ' Educational Work. One earnestly requested.' This
urgent plea was met by the offer of the Rev. W. T. A. Barber,
M.A., at that time acting as Assistant Tutor in Richmond
College. No more distinguished or better qualified Missionary
could have been either desired or discovered. Dr. Barber —
as he afterwards became — arrived in Wuchang in the spring
of 1885.

Among the many schools and colleges visited by David Hill
during his visit to England was The Leys School in Cambridge,
and there he won for China one of the most talented and
devoted of Missionaries in Dr. Sydney Rupert Hodge. His
work will come before us in another chapter.1

Another result of this furlough was the formation of ' The
Central China Prayer Union.' Conditions of membership
were few and simple. The members pledged themselves to
offer prayer for this particular branch of the work, and to do
so every day. It is noteworthy that immediately after its
formation we read in the annual Report of signs of spiritual
quickening in the Native Church. This Prayer Union continues
to this day, and its effect can never be measured.

It soon became clear to the eager advocate of the Central
China Mission that the financial resources of the Missionary
Committee would not allow of any great increase in the grant
already made to the District, and in consequence David Hill
appealed wherever he went for workers who would support
themselves wholly or in part. Such appeals were not fruitless,
and before he left England he was cheered to know that the
Revs. Joseph Bell and W. H. Watson were prepared to serve
in China without expense to the Society. It was a develop
ment of this method of increasing the staff which led to the
formation of the Laymen's Mission. The sad decrease of
workers already recorded prevented the full advantage which
Hill hoped to secure in evangelizing the villages and towns of
Hupeh. The withdrawal of Scarborough especially affected
him, for by common consent he was, sorely against his will,
appointed to the vacant chairmanship. It was with great
reluctance that he accepted the appointment. He was one
of those who are always content to serve. Authority was to
him a burden rather than an attraction. Only a sense of duty
compelled him at last to accept the position of Chairman of

'See p. 517.

476 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

the District. At the same time he was able to visualize both
the opportunities and the needs of the Church, and he had a
very definite policy in mind for the acceptance of the one and
the meeting of the other. He hoped that Missionaries might
soon be appointed to every prefecture in the province. He
had conceived large schemes for the inception or the further
ance of philanthropic work, such as might be done in hospitals,
in a school for the blind, and in an institute for foundlings.
All of these were in due course taken up, though he did not
live to see them all in full operation. Especially did he feel
the need of securing a full measure of training for Chinese
workers. Three-fourths of his Native co-workers were
illiterate, and he realized the limitation that this fact imposed
upon the activities of the Church. Vexatious delays in
securing a site for the projected school and training college in
Wuchang prevented Barber from carrying out at once the
comprehensive scheme which had been accepted by the
Synod. When at length the High School was opened in the
autumn of 1887, the first Assistant engaged proved to be
unsatisfactory, and it became necessary to dismiss him. At
the close of the year there were ten adults and four boys
attending the school.

Hopeful features of the work were, however, in strong
evidence. In the Kwangtsi and Wusueh Circuit Watson
reported considerable accessions to the Church. Not only
were these to be found in the two towns which gave the Circuit
its name, but in villages like Taitung Shiang — described by
Watson as ' the most promising country station in the District '
— the membership had doubled in a single year, and there were,
in addition, nearly a hundred persons on probation. This was
largely due to the loyal witness of a single individual for Christ.
The indigenous movement is always the strongest.

Between the two provinces of Hupeh and Canton lies the
province of Hunan, covering an area of eighty-five thousand
square miles, and containing a population of twenty-one
millions. This province is remarkable both for its natural
resources and for the character of its people. It is exceedingly
rich in agricultural produce, in minerals, and in timber. It is
well watered, and its many rivers discharge themselves into
the Tungting Lake, which opens into the Yangtse. It offers
a peculiarly rich field for antiquarian research, and its history

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 477

is such as to create a legitimate pride in its people. The
Hunanese are by far the most virile and warlike of the many
peoples of China, and they took a prominent part in the
suppression of the Tai-ping rebellion. If they were well
trained and equipped they might easily become a formidable
military force. Their consciousness of power, and their pride
in their own prowess, have, however, made them the most
unapproachable and reactionary people in China. Gradually
the province became the resort of retired officials, who were
convinced in their own minds of the immeasurable superiority
of everything Chinese when compared with what the rest of
the world had to offer, and they were bent upon maintaining
the isolation which they considered to be one of the chief
sources of strength. Such men inflamed the feeling of the
Hunanese against everything that was foreign, and the province
became notorious for the violence and rancour with which they
received every attempt of outsiders to enter into relations
with them. Missionaries shared to the full in suffering from
this anti-foreign animus.

The first European to enter the capital of the province
was Mr. Adam Dorward, a member of the China Inland Mission,
and he was so roughly handled that after a few months of
great suffering he died, the first Christian martyr of Hunan.
Not content with resisting the approach of the foreign teacher,
the leaders of the Hunanese soon became aggressive, and
began to publish ' literature ' in which the Christian religion
was held up to ridicule, and the vilest epithets were freely used
to characterize its Divine Lord. Then the personal character
of its teachers was assailed, and actions and motives were
attributed to them too indecent for us to repeat. Medical
work came in for special attention. Its wonderful works
called for explanation, and its methods were to be held up for
public censure. The common explanation offered was that
drugs were compounded from the hearts of women and from
the eyes of children, and the cures — which could not be denied —
were secured by the use of such medicines. In this way the
antipathy of the people was inflamed, until it became much
more than antipathy. Incitements to actual violence were
not lacking. Dr. Tatchell1 quotes one placard which may be
considered representative of a large class. It read as follows :

1 Medical Missions in China, p. 265.

478 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

Should you come across a foreign devil, you must act as may be
most expedient under the circumstances, and rob him of his money,
strip him of his clothes, deprive him of his food, or cut off his ears or
nose.

Equal treatment was to be dealt out to Chinese Christians.
One placard directed that

Each clan shall investigate its own territory, and should any person,
whether he be scholar, agriculturist, artist or merchant, be found who
will not sacrifice to the spirit of the most perfect, most holy, and most
ancient teacher, Confucius, and to the spirit tablet of his ancestors, it
is thereby certain that he is one who has been bewitched by the spies
of foreign devils, and has the religion of a hog, the religion of Jesus.
He is to be dragged immediately to his ancestral temple and severely
dealt with by the clan. He must be compelled to forsake his depraved
heresy and return to the right way. Should he refuse to obey, the
clan shall take the entire family of the pig-goat-devil, old and young,
male and female, and drive them out of the place. Moreover, the names
and numbers of them shall be printed in a list, and be sent all over the
surrounding districts, to all prefectures and sub-prefectures, so that
everywhere they shall be driven out. They shall not be allowed to
live within the borders of Hunan, and the names of the pig-goat-devils
shall be erased from the family registers.

It is clear that such placards indicated not a mere spasmodic
outburst of hostility, but a deliberate attempt to destroy the
followers of Christ, or at any rate to make it impossible for
them to have any place or portion within the province of
Hunan. It was a confession of alarm, and as such it might
have been even welcomed by the Christian workers, but among
a people so inflammable as the Chinese these publications were
dangerous. The alarm of the leaders of the Hunanese was
not allayed by the accounts which reached them of the Mis
sionary Conference held in Shanghai in 1890. This was
attended by five or six hundred Missionaries from every part
of China except Hunan. The success which they recorded
was sufficiently disturbing, but when it became known that
the Conference had issued a challenge to the Home Churches
to send a thousand new Missionaries to China within the
following five years, the Hunan anti-Christian propaganda,
which had somewhat died down, appeared again, with even
increased virulence in its tone, and it was scattered broadcast
over all the surrounding provinces. Its effect was seen in the
destruction of chapels and Mission houses, but the Missionaries

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 479

were cheered by not a few tokens of friendliness, and of apprecia
tion of their work. It is probable that the agitation would
have died down without any act of personal violence being
attempted, but on the fifth of June, 1891, a Chinaman was
seen in Wusueh carrying four children to receive the blessing
of the Roman Catholic priest, and when the man was asked
whether he was taking the children to be killed he was foolish
enough to say ' Yes.' A crowd of infuriated people quickly
came together. In the crush one of the children was killed,
and the crowd was all the more enraged. The cry was raised
that the Mission houses should be destroyed. The Rev. F.
Boden and Mr. Protheroe, at that time stationed in Wusueh,
were away on tour, but their wives and children, together with
Mrs. \Varren, were at once in deadliest peril. But for the help
of Chinese Christians it is probable that all would have been
killed. As it was, their escape seems to have been all but
miraculous. Meantime Mr. William Argent, of the Joyful
News Mission, had been nursing a sick brother in the Mission
House of Rest on the hills opposite Wusueh, and was waiting
for the steamer to take him back to Hankow. Mr. Green,
of H.I.M. Customs Service, was also at the office waiting for
the steamer. When the two men saw the flames of the houses
which had been set on fire they went to render assistance,
having been told of the riot. They were met by the mob, and
both were done to death in the most brutal fashion. Of
William Argent, the first martyr of the Methodist Church in
China, we shall write later. It is through such sacri
ficial death that the Church is ever being reconsecrated to the
winning of the world for Him who gave His life for it.

It was thought by many at the time that this outburst of
ignorant and unreasoning violence was really arranged by the
agents of some secret political society, seeking to embroil the
Chinese Government with European powers in the hope that
the ruling dynasty might be overthrown. Be that as it may,
the issues of this murder were such as its perpetrators could
never have imagined. An international demonstration of
respect and reverence was made at the funeral of the two
victims, and this was followed by an Imperial edict posted on
the walls of all the fourteen hundred cities of the Empire.
This edict forms the Magna Charta of Chinese Christian liberty,
and runs to the effect that Christianity was to be considered

480 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

one of the tolerated religions of China ; that Christian Mis
sionaries should be protected in the discharge of their duties,
and that Christian converts should not be persecuted for their
change of faith, nor should vexatious law-suits be taken up
against them, while all suits then pending should be honourably
settled. Compensation on a liberal scale was granted to the
relatives of the murdered men, and though it was with difficulty
that the mother of Mr. Argent could be persuaded to accept
it, she finally consented to do so on the understanding that
the money was set aside for purely Christian work in China.
With part of the sum allowed a memorial chapel, consecrated
to the service of God and the memory of William Argent, was
built in Chiao Kow, a suburb of Hankow. Four additional
evangelists from the Joyful News Mission were at once ap
pointed, and thus the loving service of William Argent was
both increased and perpetuated.

But his martyrdom had another effect, the end of which can
only be guessed at now. It was felt that the only worthy
retaliation was to be found in the evangelization of the province
from which had come the promptings to this violence. ' To
carry the Gospel of peace to the fountain head of China's
unrest and sorrow, and the Gospel of pardon to our brethren's
murderers ' — such was the Christian reply to brutality and
murder. It was therefore proposed to open six Mission stations
in Hupeh, close to the Hunan frontier, in readiness for an
immediate advance into the province when the way was opened.
But before those stations could be occupied, the way into the
very heart of Hunan had been opened to the Ministers of peace
and forgiveness. Ten years after Argent had laid down his
life Wesleyan Missionaries were in Changsha, the capital of
the province. The story of their entering will be told when
we describe the formation of the Hunan District.

The riot in Wusueh, followed as it was by the edict already
mentioned, had another important effect upon the social and
civic standing of all Chinese Christians. Once in every genera
tion the clan registers, in which the lineal descent of all male
members is entered, are corrected and brought up to date.
It is a matter of supreme importance to Chinese that every one
should be able to verify his social position by the production
of such registers ; otherwise not only does he become a social
outcast, but he is also debarred from the public examinations

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 481

upon which all official advancement depends. Now towards
the close of the 'eighties the family record of the Lan clan was
thus corrected, and the names of certain members who had
joined the Christian Church were excluded for no other reason
than that they were Christians. Attempts were made by the
Missionaries to have a new register made, as such exclusions
were in contravention of the Anglo-Chinese treaty which had
secured religious liberty for all the subjects of the Emperor.
Local Mandarins and provincial Viceroys were interviewed,
but .in the manner characteristic of the Oriental these were
able by masterly inactivity to postpone the matter apparently
sine die. After the Wusueh riots it was decided to take up
the matter again, and to make it a test case, inasmuch as it
affected the legal status of Native Christians throughout the
province. Further attempts were made to shelve the question,
but at last the Rev. T. Bramfitt had the satisfaction of securing
the adjustment of the claim, and the reinstatement of the
persons concerned in their clan. This was recorded as a
distinct strengthening of the Christian position in Central
China, and in the face of this decision no further attempts to
ostracize Christian people on the ground of their faith were
likely to occur.

All this was so much to the good, but for some time the
situation for the Missionaries was difficult. All those who were
in outlying parts of the District were brought in to the central
cities ; and, as a further precaution, all missionary ladies were
obliged to take refuge in the British Concession. But the
skies were clearing. Orders were received from Pekin to
destroy the blocks used in preparing the anti-foreign placards,
and to punish the publishers and designers of the outrageous
productions. The chief leader of the propagandists found it
convenient to disappear, and the offices frequented by his
clientele were closed. In spite of this agitation in Hunan, the
work in Hupeh continued to advance. Chapels were built in
country stations, one of which, at Hwang Shih Rang, was
distinguished as being the first sanctuary in the District built
entirely from Native funds.

In the autumn of 1891 David Hill was again in England for
what was to be his last furlough. He returned the following
year, taking with him a considerable sum of money, the token
of the confidence of the Church in this apostolic Missionary.

482 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

This money was set apart as the nucleus of a District
Extension Fund. It seemed as if the District staff, increased
as it was by eight Joyful News Evangelists and four ladies,
was to be at its strongest. But it lost two of its Ministers in
the return to England of Messrs. Barber and Boden, both of
whose wives were so broken down in health as to make their
return imperative. In 1893 the way into Hunan was beginning
to appear, and it was opened by Chinese Christians. One of
the members of the Church in Teian came one day to Mr.
Warren and related to him the story of a vision which had
appeared to him in the night. In his vision he had seen
Christ, and not only had He revealed to him the needs of
Hunan, but also He had bidden him go to the relief of His yet
ungathered flock in that province. The story was repeated
in the hearing of the whole Church on the following Sunday,
and the Chinese pastor, Chang Yihtze, was so impressed by
the recital that he declared his readiness to go with Li Kwang
Ti. The Church thereupon formed itself into a missionary
society, guaranteeing the necessary funds ; and the two men,
fully provided with tracts and Scriptures, entered the province,
taking with them the Gospel of peace, and in their hearts the
love which was to transform the intolerant province and make
it the garden of the Lord. So from Teian, where only a few
years before David Hill had been cruelly entreated and his
house destroyed, the love of Jesus went forth to win an implac
able people. The following year the Rev. E.G. Cooper entered
the province without hindrance ; others followed, and 1902
saw Cooper and his Chinese colleague— the Rev. Lo Yu Shan
— occupying rented premises in the capital. From that time
development was rapid, as will be seen when the story of Hunan
is before us.

The next two years saw a great extension in Hupeh. The
story of the Church in the Chung Yang Circuit reads like a
chapter from the Acts of the Apostles, or shall we say like the
fourth chapter of St. John's Gospel ? We have a Missionary
on a journey stopping to rest at a wayside tea-shop, and enter
ing into conversation with the woman who kept it. She comes
to find in her own heart a ' well of water springing up into
eternal life ' and seeks to bring her neighbours to the Christ.
On his next visit the Missionary found a company of believers
ready for baptism, and now the Church in Chung Yang

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 483

numbers more than sixty members. The field was white unto
harvest.

Another Circuit whose history is full of interest is Tayeh.
This Circuit was nursed through its infancy by Missionaries
of the Laymen's Mission, and in 1894 the work had so developed
that the Circuit was handed over to the pastoral care of the
parent Society and amalgamated with the Wusueh Circuit.
Tayeh and two other towns in its vicinity had been visited by
David Hill and other Missionaries, but the first definite sign
of a movement towards Christ was discovered by that devoted
Missionary, Mr. George Miles, who came in contact with Dr.
Chia, afterwards the first in this Circuit to confess Christ in
baptism. Thomas Protheroe first visited the neighbourhood
in 1888, when Dr. Chia and one or two other inquirers met for
worship on the boat by which Mr. Protheroe had travelled.
Later on Mr. Protheroe became the first pastor of the little
Church which came into being, dwelling for some time in a
disused cow-shed. A chapel was then built by the members
of the Church, the opening sermons being preached by Mr.
Protheroe and Mr. Bramfitt, and in 1899 a second chapel was
built at Hwang Shih Kang, where the opening service was
conducted by Mr. Dempsey. At that time there were seventy-
seven members in the Circuit, but ten years after that number
had increased to a hundred and fifty-six, with fifty-four others
on probation. The joy of the laymen must have been great
when they thus handed over to their ministerial brethren a
Church already formed and growing, while they passed on to
fields yet unexplored.

But death still took toll of the men and women thus bringing
to these Chinese villages and towns the Gospel of love. Miss
Duncan, one of the ladies sent out to work in this field, died
in 1894, and Mr. Hudson, who had returned to England for
rest, passed away during his furlough in the same year ; a few
months after the wife of the Rev. T. E. North was taken, and
on April 18, 1896, he who, under God, had filled the Chinese
Church with the knowledge of the love of God in Christ Jesus,
was called to the greater ministry for which he was so fully
prepared, and David Hill went home to God.

A large number of destitute people, driven from their villages
by famine, had crowded into Wuchang during the winter of
1895. To relieve these a fund had been created by Chinese

484 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

officials, and the distribution of relief had been entrusted by
them to David Hill — the foreigner so often execrated. That he
should be thus trusted, that he should be made the minister
of their philanthropy, was the crown that China placed upon
the head of a foreigner and a Missionary. But the work
entailed the entering of huts and hovels where every law of
sanitation was defied, and the fever lurking in every corner
touched him as he passed upon his Christlike ministry. All
that loving care and skill could do was at his side. In Christian
homes, Chinese and European, holy hands of prayer were
lifted in supplication that if it were God's will this life might
be spared. But it was not to be. Human plummets cannot
fathom the Divine thought, and it suffices us to know that He
with whom life, for David Hill, was an unbroken fellowship,
called His servant to the larger service that awaited him
otherwhere.

Upon both Christian and non-Christian in China, and far
away in the Church that had sent him to this service, the blow
fell with almost benumbing force. Men's voices were hushed
in reverence, as this greatest yet humblest Minister in the
kingdom of love passed to his reward. But his passing created
neither panic in the Church nor resentment in the hearts of
those who loved him. Rather it touched the springs of all
that was deepest and all that was highest in the spiritual
perceptions of the Church. The ' beauty of holiness ' broke
upon the vision of men. It had never been more clearly seen
save in Him in whose footsteps David Hill had walked in
great humility. In the heavenly music which was his life
three notes were dominant — his real and immediate fellowship
with Christ, his complete self -obliteration, and his measureless
love for all men. He was love's great ambassador.

We need not wonder that the following year in the Central
China Mission was one of marked progress. The seed that
had died at once began to bear much fruit. Chapels were
opened in no less than ten new centres ; the High School went
into its permanent home, while Chung Yang and Tung Cheng,
towns well on the way to the border of Hunan, were visited
in the hope of linking the established work in Hupeh with that
now becoming possible in the forbidden province which David
Hill had longed to enter. In 1900 the membership reached the
figure one thousand. The first half of this was the fruit of

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 485

thirty years of labour ; the second half had been gathered in
five ; and when the Centenary year arrived the total member
ship in the Wuchang and Hunan Districts was two thousand
six hundred, with more than eleven hundred on trial for
membership.

During the administration of David Hill he had the comfort
and the co-operation of a brotherhood of Missionaries second
only to himself in those qualities which go to the building up
of the Church of Christ— Thomas Bramfitt (1876-1897), T. E.
North (1879-1916), W. H. Watson (1882-), F. Boden (1884-
1892), S. R. Hodge (1882-1907), W. T. A. Barber (1885-1892),
W. A. Cornaby (1885-1921), G. G. Warren (1886-), J. K.
Hill (1890-1922), G. L. Pullan (1890-1915), and E. F. Gedye
(1893-1922). These were in addition to an equally impressive
list of those who served as members of the Laymen's and
Joyful News Missions. Of these last we have written later,
and as the eye passes over the list of names it is safe to say
that no other Mission Field records within an equal period so
varied, so gifted, and so devoted a service. Some are still
alive, loved and honoured by their brethren ; others have given
life itself as the pledge of their devotion. But all in life and in
death served as do those who love their fellow men in Christ.
To them it was given to build up in this strange and unfriendly
land a Christian Church, replacing hatred by love and the
darkness of ignorance by the light of truth. They won for
Christ the love and homage of hundreds of human hearts.
Can life hold for men any larger fruition than that ?

Before the death of David Hill, in 1894, war had broken out
between China and Japan, and this had serious secondary
effects upon Mission work. Their humiliating defeat at last
revealed to the Chinese people that they must abandon their
self-satisfaction and adopt Western methods if they were to
hold their own among the nations. A party of reform came
into existence, led by the young Emperor himself and K'ang
Yuwei, a reformer of strong and independent views. At the
close of an inglorious campaign there ensued an unseemly
scramble on the part of Europeans to secure concessions for
the building of railways and the opening of mines. These were
granted by the Government in the hope that by doing so they
would make the resources of China available for the State, and
so prevent any such humiliation as that which they had

486 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

suffered in their defeat by the Japanese. But European
Powers also made haste to divide the spoil. Russia, France,
and Germany demanded concessions of territory, and England,
lest she should find herself in a disadvantageous position,
secured by lease a strong position at Wei-hai-wei. All this
roused a spirit of resentment among the Chinese. It was
thought that the Emperor had been weak in yielding to political
pressure. He was virtually deposed, and authority passed
into the hands of the Dowager Empress, who speedily set up a
policy which was reactionary in character and ruthless in its
method of administration. Prominent reformers were put to
death without the semblance of a trial, and the country was
thus deprived of the service of some of her best sons. Then
preparations were made for ' driving into the sea ' the foreigners
who had slighted the majesty of China, and annexed whatever
of her territory best suited their schemes of political or mer
cantile aggrandisement. Naturally in most of the provinces
officials made haste to come into line with the Imperial court.
Happily for those provinces in which the Methodist Missionaries
were at work, not only were the Viceroys in power opposed to
a scheme that was born of ignorance and doomed to futility,
but they were also men of sufficient strength and determination
to see that their personal rule was respected. Li Hung Chang
at Canton, and Chang Chih Tung in the Yangtse provinces kept
unruly elements in order, and directed their subordinates to
protect and befriend all foreigners in their districts, so that,
though there was great alarm and an expectation of the worst,
not a single foreigner lost his life in those provinces.

But in other parts of the country there was great and wide
spread calamity. We may not enter in these pages into a
description of the Boxer movement, or of the intrigues of the
Dowager Empress, who sought to make a secret association
the instrument of her policy, so that in case of defeat she might
be able to ' save her face ' by throwing responsibility upon the
' Fists of righteous harmony.' In the course of a few months
two hundred and forty members of the missionary community,
men, women, and children, were murdered, and more than
thirty thousand Chinese Christians were done to death, in many
cases with unspeakable barbarity and every imaginable torture.
There can be little doubt that, together with the scheme of
ousting all foreigners, there was a deep-laid plot for destroying

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 487

the Christian Church in China. The loyalty of those
who accepted death rather than renounce their allegiance
to Christ left the world silent in a reverence that could
never be expressed in words, and little was heard in those
days of the unworthy and unmerited term of reproach —
' Rice Christians.'

In June, 1900, the Imperial Government openly identified
itself with the Boxers, and there followed the siege of the
Legations in Pekin, the march of the international relieving
force to that city, the flight of the Chinese court to Hsian Fu, and
the disgraceful looting of Pekin. Terms of peace were at last
agreed upon, but there resulted an international situation which
culminated in the Russo-Japanese war of 1903. All this meant
a considerable dislocation of missionary work in the central pro
vinces. The occupants of outlying Circuits were brought into
central stations, and women and children were removed to
places of safety. With the return of peace the Missionaries
speedily took up their work in their several spheres of labour,
and as the fidelity of their fellow Christians who had been
faithful unto death became known, the Church was recon
secrated to the same loyalty to Christ, and the prospect became
brighter than ever.

In 1906 the services of the Rev. W. A. Cornaby were lent
to the Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge.
Cornaby had rapidly made a position of his own in Central
China. His gifts in science, art, and philosophy came little
short of genius. He had by diligent and sympathetic study
acquired an intimate knowledge of Chinese modes of thought,
and his skill as an artist made him an adept in all departments
of Chinese literary composition. Added to such attainments
was a spirit which penetrated to the inmost shrine of religious
experience. Prayer to him was the breath of life, and com
munion with God a supreme reality. It was no small gift which
the Methodist Church made to the general cause of Christian
Missions when it lent his service to the Christian Literature
Society. For a number of years he edited a high-class maga
zine which had great influence in forming the ideals of those
who moved in official circles, and were honestly concerned for
the well-being of their country. In 1911 he returned to the
work of a Methodist Circuit, serving in Hanyang and Hanchuan.
In these he travelled incessantly, and the consequent exposure

488 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

and the hardships of travel in China proved too great a tax
upon a constitution never very robust. He passed away while
seeking recovery in the Ruling Sanatorium, at the very moment
when this chapter was being written in 1921.

The Sanatorium was a notable addition made to the
resources of the District in 1898, when a home of rest was built
among the beautiful hills of Ruling. The estate had been
secured by an American Missionary, who transferred the pro
perty to a Board of Trustees representing the Missionary
Societies at work in Central China. Other Europeans were
invited to share in the advantages of having a sanatorium
five thousand feet above sea level, within easy access from
Hankow, where women and children and invalids might escape
from the stifling heat and sickening odours of a Chinese city.
In a few years the estate was dotted over with homes of rest
and health. The benefit to our Missionaries has been very
great, and in remembrance of the long list of those who have
died in this part of the Mission Field one can only wish that
it had been possible to secure this advantage earlier. David
Hill's name appears in the list of the original trustees, and his
generosity did much to secure the erection of the first bungalow
provided for our workers.

The decade which followed the death of David Hill was
marked by a continuous increase in Church membership, and
by the appearance of newly appointed Missionaries to fill the
lamentable gaps in the line of workers. The Rev. Thomas
Bramfitt succeeded to the Chair, and such Missionaries as
C. W. Allan, G. A. Clayton, H. B. Sutton, E. F. P. Scholes,
W. Rowley, A. C. Rose, and T. Protheroe ensured the continua
tion of a service of such high quality and of such fruitfulness
as had marked the years which had gone before. A marked
development of medical work belongs to this decade, and will
be described in a later chapter. The outstanding event of the
period was the entrance of Christian Missionaries into Hunan,
and so rapidly did their work in that province come to harvest
that by the time the decade had run its course it was found
necessary for purposes of administration to establish a separate
District organization in the province which had so long and so
bitterly opposed the entrance of the Christian faith. The
story of the coming of the Gospel to the Hunanese belongs to
another section of this History, and we do no more here than

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 489

record that from 1903 to 1907 the work of the Church in that
District was administered from Hankow.

The Centenary year — 1913 — marks the limit within which
this History records the service of the Methodist Church in
China. Of the decade immediately preceding that year we
may not say more than can be comprised in a hasty review of
salient points in each of the more developed Circuits of the
District. Perhaps the most notable event in Hankow was
the revival of 1909. A great wave of spiritual influence had
passed over the Mission Churches in Korea and Manchuria, and
when the Rev. W. Goforth, of the Canadian Presbyterian
Mission, whose service in those countries had been the means
of blessing to very many, visited Hankow, the same gracious
power was manifested in the Churches of that city. Men were
convicted of sin, and confessed with cries and tears their
unfaithfulness. Christian workers, brought in from outlying
stations, were moved to reconsecrate themselves to the service
of Christ, and returned to their Circuits with a new passion
for the souls of men.

One of the most beautiful of the many philanthropies of
David Hill is to be found in the school for the blind in Hankow,
and place must be found for a slightly more extended notice of
this institution. Ophthalmia, due to many causes, is terribly
common in China, and for the helpless victims of this disease
Confucianism has no word of help or comfort to speak. Blind
children were usually flung away to die in their infancy ; others
were left to drag out a miserable existence. In 1888 David
Hill had erected at his own expense certain buildings which
were intended to serve the purpose of an industrial school for
boys, but difficulty in maintaining a qualified staff led to the
abandonment of the industrial school, and the buildings were
then given over to the service of the blind. An American
Missionary, by name Crosette, had been for some years at work
in Pekin, where he had identified himself with the poorest of
the poor, and had been specially employed in ministering to
the blind. At Mr. Hill's request he now came to Hankow to
assist in founding the school. On his arrival he found that
one of his own pupils in Pekin, a Mr. Yu, was already assisting
in Hankow, and these two, with David Hill, entered into a
noble confederacy to minister to the hapless blind of that city.
Industries such as blind folk may undertake were started, and

490 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

at once met with success, but perhaps the greatest boon con
ferred on the inmates of the school was the gift of power to
read. An ingenious adaptation of the Braille system to the
Hankow dialect immensely relieved the labour involved in
teaching, and soon those who walked in darkness were able
to see for themselves the light of truth. In 1890 Mr. J. L.
Dowson, a local preacher from Bishop Auckland, sailed to
take up work in this school, Mr. Crosette having by that time
returned to Pekin. In the interim Mrs. Poole had mothered
the boys, but after a long period of suffering she passed to her
rest in 1891. With the assistance of Mr. Bramfitt as inter
preter, Mr. Dowson began work ; but in 1892 he left Hankow
for America, and Mr. Yu was left in sole charge of the school.
From time to time Mrs. Cornaby and other ladies of the Mission
gave what help they could, but the appointment of a manager
and matron was greatly needed, and the arrival of Mr. and Mrs.
Enberley in 1894 gave a new impetus to the work. The growth
of the school necessitated increased accommodation, and a new
section was opened in 1907 as part of a scheme of extension to
be gradually taken up. Most of the boys could now read, and
some had found the way to Christ, and began to be employed
as Scripture readers in hospitals, where obviously they might
render most helpful service. Dr. Tatchell describes the
ministry accomplished by one of these, Hu Huan Hsi, in the
Hankow hospital, and speaks of him as ' probably the one man
whom God has used above all others, and is still blessing in the
spiritual work of the hospital/ * Many rendered excellent
service as organists and teachers of music, and presently it
came to be seen that this work, undertaken purely out of love
for suffering humanity, was likely to become a most efficient
factor in the evangelization of China. To non-Christian
Chinese this work appealed with so much force that presently
similar institutions were started in Honan and Szechwan,
while a large school of the same sort was erected in Shanghai
through the generosity of a single individual. In 1902 Mr.
Entwistle was in charge of the school, and continued to serve
its interests until 1909, when serious illness compelled his
return to England, and the school was taken over by the Rev.
G. A. Clayton.
Wuchang was early marked out as the appropriate centre

1 Op. cit., p. 135.

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 491

for educational mission work, and in the Centenary year we
find established in that centre Wesley College, the Union
Normal School, and the Theological Training Institution of
the District. Of these institutions we shall write in the
section in which the educational work of the District comes
under review. It is not necessary to say more here than that
in 1913 all three were in full working order, admirably staffed,
and most efficiently worked.

An excellent boarding school for girls was opened in Hanyang,
where the ladies sent out by the Women's Auxiliary found a
happy and most fruitful sphere of service.

The story of Wusueh is full of interest. In 1907 the Rev.
H. B. Sutton, at that time in charge of the Circuit, wrote :

It is impossible to exaggerate the wickedness of this city and the
awful indifference to the gospel message which has crept over the people.
It is appalling to think that after thirty-seven years' work, with some
of the best and holiest men here at one time or another, we have only
a Church of some dozen members. The Sunday services are cold, the
folk inattentive. Pray ; pray for us.

Yet two years after the same Missionary wrote :

Special prayer has been offered and is certainly being answered.
Formerly it was impossible to enjoy a walk without being assailed by
vile epithets ; now we can go anywhere, and are greeted with kindness.
The congregations are wonderfully improved. The Sunday services
are a source of great pleasure. We get the chapel crowded with men.
. . . It is no unusual thing to go over to the chapel to begin the service
and to find some twenty men sitting in the guest-room waiting for the
doors to open. Very many faces are becoming quite familiar to us,
and the service is an inspiration to the Preacher.

We may add that in the Centenary year, only six years after
that first and almost despondent appeal for prayer, there were
a hundred and forty-eight fully accredited members in the
Wusueh Circuit with fifty-six others on probation for admission
to full membership. Such is the power of prayer.

At Anlu, a peculiarly hard and unfruitful field, protracted
negotiations closed at last, leaving the Missionaries in possession
of one of the finest sites in the whole Distiict. Upon this land
a chapel, a mission house, a hospital and a boys' boarding
school were speedily in course of erection, and by 1913 the
returns of membership show that there were a hundred and

492 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

fifty-nine members in full fellowship, with a hundred and
fifteen on probation. Much of this success is to be attributed
to the ministry of the Rev. W. and Mrs. Rowley,1 whose work
in this centre, begun in 1909, at once bore fruit, not only in
turning opposition into friendliness, but also in winning men
and women for Christ.

Suichow is another Circuit which contributes to the general
cause by possessing a special institution of its own. This is
to be found in the home for destitute boys which was built by
the Rev. J. K. Hill, a happy memorial of his own dear child.
In 1907 the Committee accepted responsibility for its upkeep,
thus making it a permanent element in the many philanthropies
of this District. Suichow suffered much during the second
revolution, which broke out in 1912, and which resolved itself
into a civil war between the north and the south. The Yangtse
valley, midway between the seats of the two rival Govern
ments, naturally became the theatre of war, and gangs of
brigands roamed the country, and their plundering became a
greater cause of desolation than the pitched battles between
the organized forces of the two contestants. Two country
stations of this Circuit were destroyed, and in Suichow itself
it seemed several times as if the town was likely to be attacked.
The danger, however, passed ; and in 1913 the membership
of the Circuit stood at one hundred and seventy-eight, with
seventy-six on trial.

During this decade the District was sufficiently strong to
make further contributions to the general cause of Missions in
China by setting free from Circuit work the Rev. C. W. Allan
that he might co-operate in the work of preparing a Mandarin
version of the Scriptures. The work was undertaken by the
three Bible Societies of England, Scotland, and America ; and
its importance for all Societies at work in China can scarcely
be exaggerated. A further gift to the general cause was made
when the Rev. Hardy Jowett was sent from Hunan to serve
in connexion with the Young Men's Christian Association in
Japan, where hundreds of Chinese were to be found. They
had gone to that country in the hope of acquiring the secret
of Japan's pre-eminence in Asia, that they might afterwards
confer upon their own country a greater power than it possessed
among the nations. The University of Tokio and other centres

1 See pp. 520, 524.

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 493

were crowded with Chinese, and the Y.M.C.A. was wisely
guided in seeking to help these men during the formative
period of their life. Many a Chinese student returned from
Japan with more than he set out to gain. Scores of conversions
took place, and the fuller fruitage of their consecration is yet
to be seen. It is certain that the Y.M.C.A. movement in the
East is only at the beginning of its history, and the Church
which identifies itself with that movement is wise.

The following statistics relating to the Wuchang District
are full of significance, and it must be remembered in studying
them that the Mission in Hunan, which is an offset from this
District, is not represented in these returns. The figures are
for 1913.

Chapels . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Other Preaching-Places . . . . . . . . 14

Missionaries . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chinese Ministers . . . . . . . . . . 5

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Day School Teachers . . . . . . . . . . 55

Membership . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,583

Scholars in Schools . . . . . . . . . . 1,213

The work of our Missionaries in Hankow suffered most
serious dislocation just at the time when the Methodist Church
was preparing to celebrate the Centenary of the Missionary
Society. On October 10, 1911, there broke out in Central
China a revolution which was to issue in the deposing of the
dynasty which had ruled the country from the year 1644,
when the Manchus established themselves in Pekin and
assumed an absolute sovereignty over the whole Empire.
An autocratic rule which had existed for nearly two hundred
and seventy years was overthrown, and a Republican system
of Government was set up in its place. The issues of this
extraordinary event have not even now fully appeared, but
the destinies of the world are involved in what few imagined
to be within the range of possibilities. To understand its
significance we must closely distinguish between the Manchus
and the Chinese properly so called. The former have not
only usurped authority over a people superior to them in
many particulars, but have exploited their industry and their
wealth, and have subjected them to every sort of humiliation.

494 WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY

of which latter the familiar pig-tail was the symbol and sign.
They were carefully excluded from both place and power,
while freedom of speech was placed under an absolute embargo.
For many years this subordination was accepted by the
Chinese, but as soon as they began to study the learning
common in most progressive countries, and as soon as they
themselves began to taste the sweets of freedom in those
countries which they visited, revolution became ultimately
inevitable. Some concession was made to the rising tide of
feeling by the institution of reforms after the Russo-Japanese
War, but these proved to be far from operative, and were
likely to remain so as long as the administration remained in
the hands of Manchu officials. But some sort of a constitu
tion was set up, with provincial assemblies as a prominent
feature, and it was these last which precipitated the overthrow
of a rule which had never ceased to be reactionary. These
assemblies, though carefully ' packed/ were found to contain
men who were enlightened, fearless, and outspoken, while the
army upon which the Imperial Government relied was found
to be more inclined to side with the subversive element in the
national life than with the reactionary. When the recruiting
for the Republican Army took place in Hankow, the ranks
of the new army were filled by young men of good family, and
not a few of the Christian youth of the city enlisted to fight
in the battle for freedom. The three great cities of Central
China became the theatre of war, and on October 10, 1911,
the Missionaries in Hankow woke up to find the city in flames.
The Imperial army from the North were firing incendiary
shells into the city, and, while in the Concession there was a
fair amount of security, the Native town was quickly on fire.
Of the peril to the inmates of the Mission hospital and the
school for the blind we have written later.

There was no indication of an anti-missionary feeling in this
movement. On the contrary — as we have just stated —
Native Christians freely joined in it, and a Red Cross Society
was formed for the succour of the wounded. In this Society
both Chinese and Europeans freely co-operated, and thus the
amazing thing was seen that non-Christian Chinese were willing
to range themselves for service under the sacred symbol ol a
religion which their fathers had treated with contempt, and
they themselves were far from accepting.

WUCHANG : LOVE'S EMBASSY 495

This historic event clearly marks the beginning of a new era
for these people so fruitful in supplying surprises for the rest
of the world, and he would be a bold prophet who declared what
its ultimate issue is to be. It is possible that China may accept
a material interpretation of life, to the increasing difficulty of
those who would commend to her the law of the spirit of life in
Christ J esus. Or China may devote her extraordinary resources
to the increase of militarism, until the ' Yellow Peril/ of which
so many have spoken, becomes a real menace to the rest of
the world. Or, again, it may be that the witness for Christ, so
unflinchingly borne by thousands of Chinese martyrs, together
with the service of Missionaries who have reflected the mind
that was in Christ, may suddenly bear fruit beyond the imagina
tion of the world. But whether these hopes or fears be realized,
it is clear that the Christian Church is now confronted with a
situation which challenges her powers of insight, her utmost
resources, and her spirit of devotion to Him who waits for
the filling up of what remains of His suffering, that so by ' the
word of the Cross ' new power and joy and life may come to the
world of men.

IV
HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST

The intolerant Province — The Occupation of Hunan — Changsha —
Riots — The Growth of the Church.

OF all the provinces of China, Hunan has been the most
intolerant of the foreigner. From the time of the Tai-ping
rebellion it had prided itself on its ' splendid isolation/ and
had maintained a spirit of contemptuous exclusion of all that
appeared to threaten its self-sufficiency Before the Treaty
of Tientsin set up its aftermath of hatred in the hearts of the
Chinese this attitude of exclusiveness was not prominent.
In 1863 Josiah Cox had visited Changsha, the capital of the
province, and we do not find that his visit provoked any
expression of resentment ; while the Romanists had been at
work in the province with such effect that in 1856 Hunan was
made into a separate see in their ecclesiastical administration.
But when Messrs. Dorward and Dick, of the China Inland
Mission, entered Changsha in 1886, they were compelled to
leave at once, with an official escort to see them across the
frontier of the province. From that time until the beginning
of the new century Hunan not only excluded the foreigner, but
became the centre of anti-foreign propaganda which was
scurrilous, defiant, and implacable. It was not until after the
Boxer rising at the beginning of the twentieth century that
our Missionaries, after many efforts, were able to begin
systematic work in the province. And yet this same province
has proved to be the most immediately responsive to the
proclamation of the truth as it is in Jesus. When the
Centenary year came in 1913 it found a Methodist Church
established in the province, with a membership of more than
eleven hundred ; and, in the septennial period following this,
that number was doubled, while a staff of fifteen or sixteen
European Missionaries moved freely in the province, and had

496

HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST 497

established their centres of work in nine cities, including
Changsha.

The former intolerance of the Hunanese may be attributed
to two connected causes. During the Tai-ping rebellion they
had shown themselves to be by far the most courageous and
efficient in resisting the rebels, and their capital had fairly
earned the proud title of ' The City of the Iron Gates.' In
the period of dislocation and confusion which followed, their
leaders had been resourceful and successful in re-establishing
order and government. The province became known through
out the Empire as containing the best soldiers and the most
capable administrators. After the Treaty of Tientsin officials
from other parts of the country, humiliated by defeat and
personally embittered by loss of office, found an asylum in
Hunan, and some of these so worked upon the pride of the
Hunanese that they created a bitter and determined spirit
of animosity against all foreign barbarians. But when the
Japanese war, and the suppression of the Boxer movement by
European Powers, had broken down this unreasoning enmity
against everything that was foreign, the true character of the
people, and their original elements of strength, asserted them
selves, and found in Christianity nothing that was destructive
of what was worth preserving. In the subsequent reforms
their leaders took a prominent part. Knowledge became a
matter to be sought earnestly, and when it was found, a com
plete change of mind took place. The energetic and indepen
dent spirit of the people became a strong factor in favour of
the reception of Christian teaching. No finer seed-bed for
the dissemination of Christian truth could be desired, and when
to this was added that the sower came with a dearly bought
experience gathered in the more difficult fields of Canton and
Hankow, and feeling behind him the increasing momentum of
a Chinese Church already in being, we need not wonder that
the advance of Christianity was rapid and widespread. To an
account of the establishment of the Methodist Church in this,
the fairest and the strongest of all the provinces of China, we
now address ourselves.

We have already described the first attempt on the part of
Methodists to enter Hunan,1 and we have seen that it was due
to the influence of the Spirit of God in the hearts of those who

1 See p. 482.
32

498 HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST

were already Christians and who were native to China. The
first official statement that Hunan was included in the list of
Mission stations occurs in the Report of 1899, where the
' Hunan Mission ' is said to be under the direction of the Rev.
G. G. Warren, and two additional Missionaries are desired.
In 1900 Messrs. Warren, Watson, and North made a tour
through nine of the Hunan counties, arriving at last at Chang-
sha. Here they found a Missionary belonging to the Christian
and Missionary Alliance, residing in a boat and daily preaching
and distributing Christian literature in the streets of the city.
This was Mr. B. H. Alexander, and he was the first to do any
continuous work in that proud and exclusive capital. In
1901 appeared a communication from the Rev. W. H. Watson
indicating the line of advance for the Methodist Church, and
this was followed by another from the Rev. E. C. Cooper
written from Changsha, where he was then living in a rented
house and already receiving indications that the hearts of
the Hunanese were at last open to the Gospel message. Cooper
insisted upon the need of a strong Mission policy from the
outset. The opportunism so characteristic of the beginnings
of missionary enterprise in other centres was to be allowed no
place in this latest field. Higher education and medical work
were both to be provided, and a chapel, with other ' plant,'
was a first necessity. Above all, it was necessary that there
should be an adequate staff of Missionaries. The scheme was
very similar to that which had been formulated by Josiah
Cox in Hankow, but now the lessons of inadequacy had been
well learned, both on the field and by the administrative
body in England. The new Mission was started with advan
tages unknown to earlier Missionaries in China.

In 1902 the names of Missionaries definitely appointed to
serve in Hunan appear in the Minutes for the first time. The
names are those of the Revs. E. C. Cooper, Sidney Helps, and
H. B. Rattenbury. In the following year the last two were
removed to the Hupeh Section, but William Watson and
Hardy Jowett were to be found in Changsha, and E. C. Cooper
and W. W. Gibson in Paoking. These had, however, to mourn
the death of their colleague, the Rev. Lo Yu Shan. The
latter had come to Changsha with Cooper, and his kindliness
of disposition and unfailing tact were a great asset in the
work of forming the new Mission. Before he passed to the

HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST 499

higher service he had given to him the unspeakable joy of
baptizing the first three converts in Changsha, and a devoted
ministry was thus made singularly complete. One of these
was the Buddhist zealot Li T'ai Kai, of whom an interesting
account is given by the Rev. E. C. Cooper in the Foreign Field
of 1910. Within three years after his admission into the
Christian Church he had brought more than ninety of his
former co-religionists into the light of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ.

Scarcely had the work begun before the Boxer rising took
place, and though the anarchy and the murderous onslaught
upon the followers of Christ took place mostly in the north of
China, there were not a few indications that but for the strong
rule of the Viceroys of Central and South China there would
have been in those regions also a terrible ordeal for those who
had accepted the Christian faith, and for the Missionaries who
had led them to Christ. But, as things were, the Missionaries
were obliged to leave the province of Hunan, and outside of
Yochow all newly-acquired Mission property was destroyed.
To add to the difficulties of the time, the city of Changsha
was visited by a severe outbreak of cholera in 1902. By then
the trouble caused by the Boxer outbreak had subsided, and
the Missionaries had returned to their Circuits, but this new
calamity did not make it easy for them to take up again their
interrupted service. The work, however, continued to develop.
In Packing an excellent site for Mission premises had been
secured, and it was decided to make this city the head quarters
of medical work. In 1906 Dr. and Mrs. Pell1 sailed from
England to take up their ministry of healing. An equally
good site was subsequently obtained in Yungchow, where
work was begun in 1907 by Dr. G. Hadden. The greatest
hope and confident expectation was felt by our workers in
Hunan, and this was common in all departments. Not less
was this the case in England, where their service was followed
with increasing interest and sympathy. The Committee was
not slow in sending out the men required as the range of
operations extended, and in 1907 — only seven years from the
commencement of the Mission — there were ten Missionaries
on the field, with an equal number of Catechists to assist
them. The membership had increased to two hundred and

1 See p. 520.

500 HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST

ninety-four, and there was a promise of large accessions to
the Church. It was therefore decided to recognize Hunan as
a District, distinct in administration from Hankow, and this
was done, with the Rev. G. G. Warren as the first Chairman.
The arrangement had the desirable effect of relieving the
administration in the older District, where the burden of a
rapidly increasing Church was severely felt. Six years make
a brief period in which an offset from a parent Church arrives
at sufficient maturity to warrant an independent existence,
but the issue has abundantly justified whatever spirit of
adventure may have led to the decision, and the new District
showed a rapid advance in all that pertains to the establishment
of a Christian Church. Some little difficulty was felt at first
in that some candidates for admission to the Church hoped
that by coming forward they would secure the intervention
of the Missionaries in certain lawsuits in which they were
involved. Romish priests in former years had used their
influence with civic administrators in this way, but our
Missionaries were too wise to adopt their custom, and such
attempts on the part of Chinese litigants proved fruitless.

It was found that higher education in the city of Changsha
was already in the capable hands of the representatives of
Yale University, and it was wisely considered best to leave
that part of the work with them, and not to attempt to set up
another college in the city. A boarding school for girls was
opened in Yungchow, under the auspices of the Women's
Auxiliary, and the first lady to take up this work was Miss
Emma Denham. She retired, however, in 1911, and up to
the time of the Centenary year her successor had not yet
appeared. A similar school was opened at Yiyang in 1912,
under the charge of Miss Lilian Grand.

The wave of religious revival which, as we have seen, began
in Korea, and, under the ministry of the Rev. W. Goforth,
reached and blessed the Churches in Central China, was felt
also in Hunan. Here the Rev. W. H. Watson was led to
commence a series of services for the deepening of spiritual
life in 1909. In Changsha and other towns remarkable scenes
were witnessed. Chinese and Europeans, made as one by
their common spiritual need, sought and found the gift of the
Holy Spirit. The Chinese were more than refreshed by this
river of the grace of God. New life and power were given,

HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST 501

and believers were built up in their most precious faith. The
fruit of this was seen in the fact that the full membership
rose in that year from two hundred and thirty to three hundred
and ninety, an increase of over sixty-seven per cent. By this
time there were three Circuits in Hunan, and in one of these
there occurred a striking indication of the power of God in
the life of a Hunanese convert :

Away among the mountains some sixty Chinese converts
gathered for worship on July 7, 1909, and nineteen of these were received
into the Church by baptism. Each one of the nineteen had known
something of the truth for at least five years. The scene of this
baptismal service was the ancestral hall of a leading clan of the neigh
bourhood, and the first to receive the sacred rite was the woman who
had been the chief messenger of the Gospel to those who were baptized
with her. Her husband had already been baptized at the city chapel.
Seven years before sentence of expulsion from the clan or death had
been sent on to that very ancestral hall from the head hall of the clan
on this worthy couple, because they dared to believe in Jesus. They
were driven from their homes in the depth of winter, and the wife,
after accompanying her husband to the city, braved the walk back to
their home alone and then back again to the city, a distance of seventy
miles through the deep snow. Mr. and Mrs. T'ang deserve to be named
among the heroes of the Cross of Christ.

The year in which this occurred was marked by a general
increase throughout the District. In Yiyang Mrs. Champness
opened a school for training women in both evangelistic and
educational work, and the members of the Church made
themselves responsible for the opening and the maintenance
of a Mission hall in the town. Within the two years which
followed six students were sent from this Circuit to study in
the theological institution opened in Changsha. Each of
these three recorded incidents forms a clear indication of a
living Church.

In Pingkiang a boarding school for boys was begun. Ping-
kiang was one of the first towns visited by the Missionaries
after coming to Changsha, and in 1903 we read of determined
opposition. When it was proposed to build a chapel the local
Mandarin stirred up trouble for our agents, and the followers
of Confucius published a filthy and violent placard against
them. Yet no centre has proved more fruitful than this.
The name of the Circuit appears first in the Report of 1905,
when the Revs. Hardy Jowett and Vincent Johnson were

502 HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST

stationed there. That year the membership stood at fifteen.
Four years after it stood at a hundred and ninety-four, and in
the Centenary year that membership had increased to five
hundred and thirty-six — more than half the total membership
of the District. At the beginning of 1910 there were four
chapels in the Circuit ; at the close of that year there were
seven. It is to be questioned whether so great and so imme
diate a harvest has been gathered in any field.

Continuing our survey of the different Circuits in the year
1909, we note that in Packing Dr. W. B. Heyward had arrived
from Australia, and the long-closed dispensary was reopened.
In the other centre of medical work, Yungchow, Dr. Hadden
was busily at work, and a preaching-hall was opened. In this
Circuit there was another boarding school for boys, and the
administration which decided to multiply this agency rather
than to centralize the work was a wise one. At Chenchow,
the most southern Circuit in the province, the soil seemed
more stubborn in yielding the longed-for harvest, but prepara
tions were made for its ingathering, and a chapel and Mission
house were in course of construction by the Rev. E. F. P.
Scholes. This confidence was confirmed by a membership
of fifty-three in the Centenary year.

As we have seen, the Rev. W. H. Watson had been set
apart for District evangelistic work, and in 1909 we find him
travelling through the remote regions to the west of the
province, regions which were inhabited by aboriginal tribes
of Chinese. The wild people inhabiting those districts had
never acknowledged the government of the Manchus, but
remained under the rule of their own chiefs, and enjoyed a
certain amount of security in their mountain fastnesses.

In Changsha the most important development of all was
to be found in the opening of a theological institution under the
care of the Rev. Hardy Jowett. A happy spirit of co-operation
among the different Societies at work in the province allowed
this institution to admit students belonging to other
Churches. That it should be opened after only ten years
of work in the province affords a happy contrast with the
delay of other Districts in beginning this essential branch of
the work.

Thus every department of the work of the Church was
prosperous, when there broke out in Changsha one of those

HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST 503

riots which seem to be periodic in China, and which may in an
hour undo the work of years. The storm broke on April 10,
1910. At that time Warren and Cooper were resident in
Changsha, and with them were two newly appointed Mission
aries, the Revs. E. Cowling and W. L. Oakes. It originated
in a bitter resentment felt by the populace against the action
of the civic authorities, but its effects were painfully felt by
the Missionaries at work in the city. Famine in other districts
had raised the price of rice in Changsha, and the delay of the
Governor in opening the public granaries led to angry demon
strations on the part of the mob. Government buildings in
every part of the city were set on fire, and looting took place
in all directions. Presently the mob broke into the homes of
the Missionaries, and they had hastily to seek refuge on a
vessel lying in the river. No lives were lost, but much property
belonging to the Mission party was destroyed, and all Christian
work in the city was brought to a standstill. It was thought
that the old anti-foreign animus, still smouldering in the mind
of the upper classes of society, was really at the back of this
outburst of feeling, and it was held by some that the rioting
of a hungry people had anticipated a still more violent outburst
against the presence of foreigners in the city, and had caused
its miscarriage. There was doubtless a certain amount of
reaction against the spirit of reform which was becoming
prevalent. The loan of foreign capital for railway construction
was resented, as giving to foreigners a hold on the country,
and there was much opposition to allowing these to acquire
property in land. The riots were, on this showing, not anti-
missionary but anti-foreign, and they evidenced a growing
spirit of revolt against the ruling dynasty. This culminated
in the great revolution of 1911, when the Manchu Government
was overthrown, and a Republic set up in its place. It is full
of significance that of three Mission hospitals in Changsha not
one was injured. Comment is unnecessary.

The revolution of 1911 was, as we have seen, the occasion
of much distress to missionary societies and of temporary
dislocation in work in Canton and Hankow, but in Hunan
these effects were not felt so severely. The people of the
province had settled down to more or less normal conditions
of life, and the Missionaries were able to report ' A good year.'
Yiyang and Pingkiang continued to show rapid growth, and

504 HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST

the statistics published by the Rev. C. S. Champness in the
Foreign Field of 1912 are full of interest :

Yiyang Circuit 1908 1911

Preaching-Places . . . . i . . 6

Adult Membership . . . . 58 . . 119

Local Preachers . . . . . . 3 . . 15

Schools i (mixed)

„ Boys .. 2

„ Girls (Boarding) . . . . i

„ Bible Training . . . . i

A happy incident of the year was that of a United Summer
School held at Nanyoh, where a famous shrine, visited daily
by thousands of pilgrims, is to be found. More than eighty
students gathered together in this place for study and evange
listic work among the pilgrims. They came from twenty-
three different counties, from thirty-six different towns or
cities, and from forty-four Churches. Altogether nine different
Missions were represented on the occasion.

We met under no denominational name ; we joined together in
one common worship, and round one table broke bread together in one
common sacrament.1

No less than seventy thousand New Testaments, Gospel
extracts, and other Christian literature were distributed.
The incident was one of happy augury. For both the problem
of Christian education, and that of evangelizing the vast and
yet unevangelized populations of China, are to be solved by
co-operation between the different Churches at work in that
country. It is possible that China may be the first to show
the way to the alluring goal of ' the union of the Churches.'
The writer well remembers the effect produced upon the mem
bers of the Edinburgh Conference by the dry and somewhat
caustic utterance of a Chinese Delegate, when he said : ' We
in China are not interested in sectarian differences.' The
words fell like a rebuke upon the Churches assembled on that
occasion. It is entirely in accord with this tendency that it

1 See the Foreign Field for 1912, p. 383.

HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST 505

was proposed in 1913 that the Methodist theological institu
tion in Changsha should be merged in a ' Union Institution.'
Our premises were put at the service of the common cause,
and the Rev. E. C. Cooper was appointed the first Principal
of the institution. Yet another indication of the same charac
ter, but revealing a special and welcome feature of its own,
was a proposal that the Yale University Mission should estab
lish a University in Changsha. That Mission at once acquiesced,
and invited the other Societies at work in the city to join them
in their endeavour, and this proposed establishing of a
Christian University came from the Provincial Government
of Hunan. This was in 1913 ; and it was only in 1900 that
Warren, Watson and North first entered the city.

We have now come in our survey to the chief events of the
year which marks the limit of the Methodist Centenary History
of Mission work. The following statistics taken from the
Society's Report for that year may well be studied. They
relate to the Hunan District :

Chapels . . . . . . . . . . . . 07

European Missionaries . . . . . . . . X8

Chinese Ministers . . . . . . . . 2

Catechists . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Local Preachers . . . . . . . . . . 05

Christian Community . . . . . . . . 1,150

It will be seen from a study of these figures that the story of
the Methodist Church in Hunan differs from that of Canton
and Wuchang at least in one particular. It is the story of an
immediate harvest. It gives us the picture of a long-closed
door suddenly flung wide open to the ambassadors of the love
of God in Jesus Christ. It lacks the element of uncertainty,
and of long-continued waiting for results while the Missionary
moved in this direction and in that, and learned through many
a failure the right method of approach. It is not, indeed,
wanting in the true romance of the great adventure. In the
story of this field, as in that of others, there awaits the reader
the thrill with which he will read of ' hopeless odds/ and the
triumph of those who ' out of weakness were made strong.'
His own spiritual experience will be enriched, or possibly
rebuked, as there passes before his eyes the picture of the

506 HUNAN : THE BARRIERS DOWN AT LAST

simplicity of faith crowned with its assured victory ; of men
and women accepting whatever circumstances might bring
in the form of hardship, pain, and even death, if only they
might obtain the privilege of bringing to Christ remote,
ignorant, and half unintelligible villagers in those great tracts
of country which make the heart of China. But such interest
as usually attaches to the men who have to ' feel their way '
in a strange and dark land is not prominent here, as it is in
the earliest records of the work of their brethren in Africa and
India, and in those of the first-established Missions in China itself .
The Missionaries in Hunan had scarcely begun to sow before
the time of reaping was upon them, and within thirteen years
the Christian community which had accepted their Ministry
of Christ numbered more than a thousand.

To account for this difference we must always remember
that this latest Mission of the Methodist Church enjoyed the
incalculable advantage of having for its pioneers men who
were already perfectly at home in speaking the language of
the people. They were familiar with the Chinese habit of
thought, and had learned in the hard school of experience
the best line of approach. They were also thoroughly
acclimatized. In themselves they were men of great ability,
sterling character, and they enjoyed a rich and deep
experience of Christ. Such men as Warren, Cooper, and
Watson — to mention only three — might be trusted to lay a
good foundation for the Church in Hunan. But there was
another cause of this ready acceptance of the Christian faith.
It is to be found in the character of the Hunanese. We have
ourselves written of these as being at first ' anti-Christian '
and rigidly exclusive of everything foreign. But subsequent
events have proved that they were such only under the guidance
and influence of their social and political leaders. As soon
as the people themselves had come to understand the motive
of the Christian Missionary, and had felt ' the power of Jesus'
Name,' they gave not merely a hearing to the Gospel, but
their very hearts to Christ. Then the independence and
courage which had given them their place among the different
peoples of China were both brought into subjection to Christ,
and made them as staunch in their allegiance as they had been
obstinate in their refusal. An excellent illustration of this is
to be found in the story of Dr. Teng. In a village some distance

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from Changsha Dr. Teng, with three other men, was thrown
into prison for connivance in the burning of idols in a temple
some years before.

The four men, after a delay of six months, were brought to trial
and sentenced to terms of two, three, and four years' imprisonment
respectively. When the first two had completed their sentences, in
accordance with Chinese custom, word was sent to their clansmen to
become bond for their future behaviour. ' Give up the foreign religion,'
said the clansmen to the prisoners, ' and we will give our bond.' The
prisoners absolutely refused to give any such guarantee, and their
friends replied, ' Then do not blame us for declining to be bound. We
do not know whether you will repeat the offence or not, and if you should
do so, and we are bondmen for you, we should suffer.' The men
actually continued on for ten months beyond the sentence before the
prison gates opened. The fourth man — Dr. Teng — was kept in prison
until last year, which was a year of grace to such prisoners as he.
Imperial proclamation conferred pardon on certain classes of offenders,
and our friend petitioned the magistrate for the fulfilment of the
Imperial promise. But the unoiled wheels of Chinese justice declined
to turn. Then it happened that the magistrate's wife fell ill, and this
particular prisoner, being a doctor, was enabled to cure her. The
effect was immediate. Before the necessary communications with
the Government could be carried out the prisoner was released on
parole — a parole which he daily honoured by a return to prison for the
night — and as soon as possible the release was made permanent. But
the prisoner, unbaptized and uncommissioned as he had been all the
years of his imprisonment, did not leave the city jail until he had
proclaimed the opening of another kind of prison to those who had
been his fellow prisoners.1

Another indication of the same steadfast loyalty to Christ
may well be placed on record. During the rioting in Changsha
which took place in 1910, it was thought desirable to remove
for a time to a place of safety all foreigners living in the
province. The flock was left without a shepherd. It was no
slight test of a newly acknowledged faith. The Christians
had every reason to apprehend persecution, if not death.
Yet the members of the Church, bereft of their spiritual
leaders, kept unsullied their loyalty to Christ, and quietly
met together as before for Christian worship. The future of a
Church whose members are of such character is assured. The
secret of Jesus is with them, and coming generations in
Western lands may one day marvel at the revelation of Christ
to be seen in the Church of Hunan.

1 Quoted in the Society's Report for 1910.

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

Slow Growth of this Work in Methodist Missions — First Attempts
in Hankow and in Canton — Dr. Wenyon — Dr. Roderick Macdonald —
Wuchow — Hankow and Dr. Hodge — A Succession of Missionary
Doctors — The Medical Service of Women — The Wuchang Hospital
and Dr. Margaret Bennett.

IT is the most natural thing in the world that the Christian
Missionary should regard the ministry of healing as a feature
of the service to which he is called. It was prominent in the
work of our Lord Himself, and scarcely less so in that of His
disciples, whose commission embraced the healing of the sick.
But even if these compelling examples had been lacking, the
general character and spirit of the Christian religion would
have enforced its adoption. Love for mankind implies a
pitiful regard for all who suffer and an obligation to relieve
them where it is possible. The same spirit which breaks the
fetters of the slave, or toils and suffers for the emancipation of
those who are ' fast bound in sin and nature's night/ insists
upon the effort being made to relieve the physical sufferings
of men. Even those Missionaries who have had the most
elementary knowledge of the use of drugs have been driven
to prescribe when they have met with such ailments as were
familiar to them, in default of trained physicians to whom the
sufferer might be sent. Sometimes this ' zeal not according to
knowledge ' has had disastrous effects, and the practice of the
amateur doctor is now discountenanced. But this is due to the
fact that in most Mission Fields the fully qualified doctor is
now to be found, and medical and surgical instalments have
been set up, to the immeasurable advantage of missionary
operations in general. It must, however, be confessed that
most Missionary Societies, and notably that of the Methodist
Church, have been slow in taking up this branch of the

508

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 509

work, and even to-day medical Missions do not receive one-
tenth of the attention they deserve.

It may be that this has been due to an unhappy and utterly
false discrimination between the medical and the evangelistic
work. It was thought that the Missionary's one work was
' to save souls ' ; it was not seen that the soul might be
reached through the body, that our Lord's example was a
sufficient endorsement of such a ministry, and that common
philanthropy demanded its exercise. But it must not be
supposed that those who direct the affairs of the different
Societies were the victims of any such delusion. Probably
that which caused their long-deferred and quite insufficient
provision for such work was the simple fact that they had no
adequate means for its furtherance at their disposal. Hospitals,
with all that they entail in appliances and in personnel, are
expensive, and with limited funds missionary Boards were
quite unable to finance the schemes that were put before them.
It must be remembered, too, that fully qualified men and
women who are willing to serve as Christian Missionaries
were not easily met with fifty years ago, though it is one of
the happier signs of our times that they are now more fre
quently found.

It is quite unnecessary to enlarge here upon the need for
such work among pagan people. The tender mercies of those
who are ignorant of anatomy or physiology are often the very
refinement of cruelty inflicted upon those who are already in
a condition of suffering, and few countries have surpassed
China in the torture inflicted upon the victims of disease.
The national vanity of the Chinese made them incapable of
seeing any defect in their system of curing the sick. The
consequence has been that, apart from the futility of charms,
incantations, and other similar methods of dealing with disease,
methods not by any means confined to China, the stories of
actual suffering inflicted in the name of science upon the sick
baffle description. Christianity brought to China its own
peculiar endowment of wise, skilful, and sympathetic treat
ment. Even in India, where the knowledge of medicine was
on a far higher plane than that on which it was found in China,
hospitals were unknown before the Christian appeared. Those
homes of healing and love are the distinct product of the
Christian ethic, which compels every acquired product of a

5io MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

mind set free from superstition and open to receive an ever-
advancing knowledge to bow itself in the service of all who
suffer. To the Christian, knowledge — like everything else —
is given as a trust to be used for others.

The first medical representative of the Protestant Christian
Church who came to China was the Rev. Karl F. A. Giitzlaff,
of the Netherlands Mission. He began work in 1827, and in
1835 the American Board of Missions, whose generous provision
for their work may well be a matter for envy to others, sent
no less than five medical Missionaries to that country. The
first British medical Missionary to appear in China was William
Lockhart, who arrived in 1839, and served for twenty years.

We have seen that in the scheme of missionary work pre
pared by Josiah Cox, a distinct place was given to medical
work, and the first colleague to join him in Hankow was Dr.
F. Porter Smith. He had been educated at Wesley College,
Taunton, and after a brilliant course at King's College and
Hospital in London he took up a practice at Shepton Mallet,
in Somersetshire. But in 1863, soon after Cox had laid his
scheme before the Committee, he offered his services to our
Society.

Here, then, was a distinct answer to prayer, and we can
imagine the joy that filled the heart of the lonely Missionary
in Hankow. In May, 1864, Dr. and Mrs. Porter Smith arrived
in Hankow after a voyage of five months. The spirit in which
the new work was undertaken is shown in the first ' Minute '
of the miniature Synod. ' A weekly meeting shall be held on
Friday evenings at seven o'clock, for the dispatch of business
and for prayer. It is to be understood that the secular
business shall be quickly passed, so as to leave time for prayer.'

A small house was taken, and in this Dr. Smith began work,
Cox acting as interpreter. It was a modest hospital, but
* its work soon began to make a great impression. Its influence
affected every grade of society. Patients from almost every
province attended. Tartar officials, Mandarins, literary
graduates, undistinguished citizens, soldiers, villagers, and
beggars, were to be found amongst the patients.' In 1866
a small hospital was built in close proximity to the Mission
house, and this was the first hospital specially erected in
Central China. Dr. Smith added to his already excessive
labour a considerable amount of literary work ; but his

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 511

health, never very robust, suffered in consequence. In spite
of warnings that he was overtaxing his strength, he continued
to work at high pressure, and once a week he crossed the river
to do similar service in Wuchang. The strain of such work
upon one who was single-handed was too great, and though in
1870 he was joined by Dr. E. P. Hardey, he was obliged to
return to England so weakened that a second term of service
was impossible. Dr. Hardey was thus left to support this
burden alone. How heavy it was may be guessed from the
fact that the patients attending the hospital in a single year
numbered ten thousand. The work was too heavy for one
man to do it without running the risk of a failure in health,
and after five years Dr. Hardey, too, was obliged to return
to England. A successor was found ; but he only remained
in Hankow for a year before he resigned, and for ten long
years the medical work in Central China was given up.

Meantime medical work had been begun in Canton, and the
honour of its inception belongs to the Rev. Dr. Wenyon, who
arrived in Canton in 1871. After three months spent in
considering the best centre it was decided that this
branch of work should be located in Fatshan. The place
was well chosen. We have seen that the anti-foreign
feeling was peculiarly strong in that city, and if its inhabitants
were to be disarmed of their animosity nothing was so likely
to be effective as the ministry of healing, with its disinterested
compassion. But the difficulty of finding suitable premises
was very great, and after many futile efforts Dr. Wenyon
determined to make a start in the building which had served
as a chapel during the years in which the faithful Chinese
agents had unflinchingly borne witness to the love of God in
Christ Jesus. The little vestry which served as a consulting-
room was quickly crowded out, and Dr. Wenyon had to devise
ingenious methods of preventing wealthier patients from
preventing the approach of the poor. While the patients
waited their turn in the chapel evangelistic addresses were
given and Christian literature was distributed. During
those early days Wenyon 's position was most precarious.
In an address given in Exeter Hall during his furlough he
thus describes it :

The introduction of operative surgery to such a township as Fat
shan was invested with special risk and difficulty. There was no

512 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

British Consul there, no European gun-boat, no police protection,
and no place of refuge. My first serious operation, therefore, was an
experience which I would not like to go through again. ... If I
operated successfully it would establish the reputation of our hospital ;
but if I operated and failed, not only should I lose my patient — always
a sorrow to a surgeon's heart — but the life of myself and of my family
would be endangered ; we should certainly have been driven from the
town, our enterprise there would have collapsed, and similar enterprises
in other parts of the province would have been seriously prejudiced.
I felt this was a case in which I had a right to look for some special
Divine assistance. I put it into the hands of the Great Physician,
and then undertook the operation with no other assistance than that
of a few raw students who had not yet become used to the sight of
blood.

Happily the operation was conspicuously successful, but the
story as told by Dr. Wenyon illustrates the peculiar difficulty
which our medical Missionaries have had to confront in their
work. It soon became evident that the situation could not
continue. Surgical skill and the personal devotion of the
Missionary to his duty were thrown away unless more adequate
provision in the form of a hospital were provided. An appeal
to the Committee for funds was met by the all too frequent
reply that the funds of the Society were not in a condition to
allow of a grant being made for the purpose. Dr. Wenyon
then made a public appeal through the Press, and at the
same time, with the audacity of faith, acquired a building
suitable to his purpose at a rental of a hundred pounds per
annum. The responsibility for this he of course was obliged
to accept, but faith met with its due reward. A generous
friend in England guaranteed the rent for five years, and other
donations enabled the doctor to furnish a hospital in which a
hundred patients might be received. Every effort was made
to secure at least some measure of local support, but the
anxiety of meeting the expense of such an institution weighed
heavily upon the mind of the Missionary. It was deplorable
that he should have been allowed to carry any such burden.

It must not be forgotten that throughout that first period
Dr. Wenyon had to work without trained assistants. He
was entirely alone, with a hostile people round him, ready to
believe the most outrageous statements as to the methods and
purpose of this incomprehensible foreigner, who seemed to
have at his command a magical power suggesting super
natural, if not diabolic, co-operation. But the doctor held

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 513

on his course, and speaks of having treated as many as three
hundred patients in one day. We can only marvel at the
physique which enabled him to endure so great a strain.
Possibly the enforced closing of the hospital in 1883, owing to
riots in Canton, came by way of a happy relief. The British
Consul in Canton considered that the presence of an Englishman
in Fatshan during the unrest of that time could not be allowed,
and Dr. Wenyon was obliged to accept a month's holiday.
By that time he had been able to form a class for training
medical students, and again we are amazed at the resources
which enabled him to do so. But the results have been
beyond all praise. They are to be seen in the long list of
students who have, in spite of innumerable difficulties, acquired
no mean skill in medicine and surgery. Some of these remained
after their course to assist their teacher, and on occasion have
ably carried on the work of the hospital in the absence of the
doctor. Dr. Tatchell mentions the interesting fact that when
the first meeting of the Chinese Medical Society was held in
Canton, only doctors who had been taught on Western lines
being admitted, about one-third of those present had received
their training in Fatshan. If Dr. Wenyon 's work had secured
no other result than this he might well have been content.
It was no small thing to have made available for Chinese
sufferers that large measure of remedial power. But there
was much more than this, for many found in the Fatshan
hospital that a greater Healer than the Missionary was present
to cure the sin-sick soul. Dr. Wenyon draws a pathetic
picture of the baptism of two lepers whom he baptized during
the first year he spent in Fatshan :

They had received their light through reading the Bible in Chinese,
and they gave such satisfactory evidence of their conversion that I
could not refuse their request. They could not, of course, come into
our chapel, lepers as they were. So I went out to see them at their
place of banishment among the hills. Hard by the lonely hut in which
they were living ran a beautiful clear stream, and down to this stream
I went like John the Baptist, the lepers being with me, and there,
beneath the broad blue dome of heaven, lit up by God's own sunshine,
I baptized them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost.

After some time help came to the over-tasked doctor. Mr.
Anton Anderssen was engaged as dispenser, and in 1884
33

514 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

Dr. Roderick Macdonald arrived in Canton. Mr. Anderssen
was a Swede who had joined Dr. Wenyon soon after the latter
began his ministry in Fatshan. He was an ideal collaborator.
His patience and courage were equalled only by his modesty
and diligence. He was able by study and observation to
become at last a qualified practitioner, taking his degree in
an American University. When Dr. Wenyon retired in 1896
the full responsibility fell upon Dr. Anderssen, and faithfully
and ably did he carry on the work which Dr. Wenyon laid
down. He finally retired in 1903.

Of Dr. Macdonald it is hard for an old schoolfellow and
friend to write. The affection which ' Roddy ' elicited in his
boyhood surges up in the memory, and makes it difficult in
describing his ministry to find expressions which appear
adequate. Happily the full story of his life, written by his
wife, is available for those who would study the conditions of
medical work in China, and the character of one of the saint-
liest men who have given life itself in token and pledge of their
devotion to Christ. Six months after his arrival in Canton
he had to accept the sole responsibility of the hospital in
Fatshan, Dr. Wenyon having offered his services on behalf
of the Chinese soldiers, the Empire being then at war with
France. On the return of Dr. Wenyon branch dispensaries
were opened at Shi Kiu and Shiuchow, on the North River,
but owing to the small staff available these were soon closed
again. To the latter of the two places Dr. Macdonald was
appointed in 1890. But circumstances were against him from
the first, and interminable delays, intentionally caused,
prevented anything like efficient work being done at this
centre. It remained in abeyance until 1908, when a fresh
start was made by Dr. Dansey Smith, but up to the Centenary
year the hospital remained unbuilt ; occasional visits from
other medical centres were all that was possible.

Macdonald returned from furlough in 1893 and took over
the Fatshan hospital while Wenyon and Anderssen were on
furlough, but the strain was too great, and on Wenyon's
return in 1895 he found Macdonald so seriously broken down
that only an immediate voyage to Japan saved his life, and
at the end of that year it was decided that he should return
to England. It seemed then that his service in China was
closed, but in 1897 he had so recovered that he was able to

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 515

return, and he was asked to begin medical work at Wuchow,
a city on the West River about two hundred and twenty-four
miles from Canton. Wuchow is the capital of the Kwangsi
province ; and had been recently opened as a treaty-port. It
was thought that there was an opportunity of beginning work
in that province. It is impossible for want of space to follow
the course of Macdonald's ministry in Wuchow. The out
break of plague in 1899, and of famine in 1903, preceded as
this latter was by a disastrous flooding of the West River,
were occasions of proving his devotion to those whose sufferings
can scarcely be described, and in 1899 the first converts in
the new Mission were received by baptism into the Christian
Church. Macdonald secured an admirable site for Mission
premises, and at once set about the erection of a hospital.
It was feared at one time that the site of the hospital, fronting
the Fu River, was unsuitable owing to the frequent flooding
of the river, and the possible erosion of its banks. That fear
was, however, happily removed, and the spaciousness of the
site presented possibilities of extension inevitable in any
medical Mission that attains a measure of success. In the
course of time, though the design of the hospital was admirably
conceived, some of the buildings proved to be inadequate,
and an amount of structural alteration was indicated as
necessary. Later on a leper asylum, the cost of which is
borne by the ' Mission to Lepers in India and the East,' was
opened on an island some miles up the river.

Macdonald did not live to see the completion of his hospital.
When he was returning from the Synod of 1906 the steamer on
which he travelled was attacked by pirates, and while seeking
to succour the captain, who was severely wounded, Macdonald
was shot down and died on the spot. Of the life that reached
so tragic a close it is enough to say in the words of the Com
missioner of Customs in the city of Wuchow, ' Such men do
not die ; their lives are part of the Life Eternal, and in their
measure they live in those who have known and loved them.'1

To return to Fatshan. Dr. W. J. Webb Anderson came to
the relief of a sadly overworked staff in 1900, and steps were
soon taken to build a new hospital. The one which had done
duty up to that time was admirably placed so far as centrality
was concerned, and it continued to be used as a dispensary.

1 Quoted by Mrs. Macdonald in Roderick Macdonald, p. 291,

5i6 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

But its surroundings were far from hygienic, and for the
purposes of a hospital it was necessary to seek a cleaner
locality. In 1905 Dr. Dansey Smith took the place of Dr.
Webb Anderson, whose health necessitated a furlough, and
shortly after he was joined by Dr. Philip Rees,1 but the latter
was shortly after transferred to Wuchow. The last-named of
the many excellent doctors who served in China was another
of those whom to know was to love. To his eminent gifts as
a doctor he added a wonderfully charming personality, and
a deep love for Christ and for the Chinese people irradiated
all his work. For six years he continued to exercise a most
gracious ministry in Wuchow. In 1911 he was with reluctance
compelled to take furlough, and returned to China in 1912,
though prudence would have forbidden him to do so. In
August of that year, while he was on a visit to Hong Kong, an
operation became necessary, and he lacked the necessary
reserves of strength which would have enabled him to rally.
So yet another name was added to the list of those who counted
not their own lives dear to them that they might minister to
Christ's needy ones in China. Shortly before his death he
was joined at Wuchow by Dr. B. R. Vickers, upon whom the
heavy burden of an unshared service fell.

In 1908 Dr. Webb Anderson, who had returned from furlough,
was joined by Dr. Alfred Hooker at Fatshan, and in the same
year the new hospital was opened, a grant of five hundred
pounds from the Twentieth Century Fund being a great relief
to the Missionaries in their financial embarrassments. The
old hospital continued to be used as a dispensary, and was
ably served by Dr. So Kit San. The greater part of the cost
of the new hospital was received from Chinese sources, an
indication of the appreciation of those who knew its value, and
the current charges are also fully met by the income from fees,
the poorer patients being treated gratuitously. In the
Centenary year Dr. Webb Anderson was still in charge of this
hospital, and its range and efficiency continually increased.
During that year more than nine thousand patients were
treated within its walls, and the number of out-patients made
a demand upon the staff which, great as it was, they were
only too happy to meet. In the course of time additions were
made to the site, until eventually an area of four acres had

1 See p. 432.

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 517

been secured. This allowed room for buildings made necessary
by the development of the work, and it was hoped that in
time a home and school for nurses might be added, so as not
only to add to the convenience of working the hospital, but
also to carry its gracious ministry into the homes of the people.
The cost of all this extension was met from the income of the
hospital, which has not only been adequate to the purpose,
but has made it possible to help the work at Wuchow and
Shiuchow, and still to spare something for schools and chapels
in the District. It is interesting to note that in the Centenary
year the number of Church members in Fatshan stood at
two hundred and ninety. When Dr. Wenyon began work in
that city there were only three Chinese Christians within its
walls.

Having thus traced the course of this work in the southern
District, we may now return to Hankow, where, as we have
seen, the work was in abeyance for ten years. The arrival
of Dr. Sydney Hodge marked the beginning of a remarkable
extension of this branch of work in Central China, but the
situation in 1887 was such as would have reduced to despair
any one of a less patient disposition and a less determined
will. Dr. Hodge was without either hospital or dispensary.
There was not even a room available for the reception of
patients. He made his own study do duty for all three.
What the inconvenience must have been is left to the imagina
tion, and only the instructed imagination will be able to measure
it. At the same time Hodge gave invaluable help by superin
tending the erection of the women's hospital, and when a plot
of ground on the opposite side of the same street was acquired
for a men's hospital he gave himself up to the plans and
specifications for this also. His earliest months in the country,
which should have been given to the acquirement of the
language, were thus filled with work which called for immediate
attention, and he was the only man on the spot who could
give it. By 1890 the first block of the buildings as planned
was completed, as well as an out-patients' department. Then
the inevitable happened. The overtaxed physique, which
had been drawn upon with such prodigality, suffered a break
down. Hodge was compelled to withdraw in order to recu
perate, and there was nothing for it but to close the hospital.
It can never be too often repeated that to begin a medical

518 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

Mission with less than two qualified Missionaries is to invite
the calamity of a breakdown in the health of the doctor, and
a serious set-back in the work. Throughout the 'nineties the
appeal — never more pathetic — of ' One wanted ' for medical
work appears year after year in the Society's Report, but it
was not until 1900 that a second name was added to Dr.
Hodge's. This name was that of Dr. R. T. Booth. A few
brief years of happy and most devoted work followed, and
then in 1907 — the same year as that in which Thomas Protheroe
died — the Central China Mission was called to mourn the loss
of one of its most devoted Missionaries. The death of Dr.
Hodge left the Hankow District most sorely bereaved. We may
only say here that the same unsparing energy, the same un
stinted service, whether rendered to a brother Missionary, a
high-placed Mandarin, or some abject Chinese beggar, and the
same unqualified devotion to Christ, marked the ministry of
Dr. Hodge to its earthly close.

He was a wise, far-seeing counsellor, a skilful surgeon and pains
taking physician, a vigorous leader of men, a sympathetic, tender
hearted friend, a faithful preacher, a man of God, of faith, of prayer.

The work of healing was to him in itself a sacred manifestation of
Christ the Healer, and no mere adjunct to a scheme for gaining converts.

Such are some of the tributes borne to him. His death left
a great gap in the ranks of the Mission staff. To fill it Dr.
Tatchell was transferred to Hankow, his place at Tayeh being
taken by Dr. Pell.

The origin and the course of the Wesleyan Laymen's Mission
will appear before us in another chapter, but their extensive
and most admirable service in the medical branch of the work
accounts for the statement made above that other doctors
were immediately available to fill the vacancy in the Hankow
hospital. In 1886 Dr. Arthur Morley arrived in Hankow.
He was the second layman to respond to the appeal of David
Hill, and he began his great work in Teian. He bore a name
well known to all Methodists, and the part that his grand
father had played in forming the Wesleyan Missionary Society
has been fully described in Volume I. of this History.1 He
was now, in the providence of God, to begin a ministry the
full fruition of which will appear in years still in the future.

1 See p. 40.

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 519

M
His gifts are many and great, but each is graced by a disposition

so simple and so sincere as almost to conceal the sterling
quality of his mental endowment, while his sympathy and
tenderness have greatly endeared him to the people among
whom and for whom he has spent the best years of his life.
Teian (the name was formerly spelt Teh Ngan) lies to the
north of Hankow and is distant from that city about a
hundred miles. Mission work had been carried on in that
city for a number of years, but always with difficulty. Opposi
tion to all foreigners was pronounced and relentless. On
three different occasions the Mission premises had been
attacked, and when Dr. Morley began his work there, the first
task that awaited him was to rebuild a Mission house which
had been left in ruin for three years. He soon had patients
enough, and though on one occasion he was badly handled by
a mob and shamefully entreated, his influence was soon
acknowledged. His hospital was small and its furniture far
from adequate, but in 1899 it was decided to begin the erection
of a worthier home of healing in another part of the city.
This was made possible through the generosity of the relatives
of David Hill in York, and the hospital now stands as a fitting
memorial of one of the greatest Missionaries of the Methodist
Church. In 1900 the new hospital was opened. It had been
designed by Dr. Morley, and the style of the buildings conforms
to Chinese ideas of architecture. Another building, a short
distance away, was afterwards adapted to the use of a women's
hospital. When this chapter was written Dr. Morley was
completing his thirty-sixth year of work — a record of con
tinuous service.

Another notable centre of medical work is to be found in
Anlu, which is situated on the River Han, about two hundred
and fifty miles from Hankow. The name of that city, when
rendered into English, appears as ' The Land of Peace/ and
its inhabitants were peaceful to the extent of apathy. Several
of the most devoted Missionaries laboured here, but the
irresponsiveness of the inhabitants would have induced despair,
if that had been possible to Christian Missionaries. In 1907
Dr. Edward Cundall of York was appointed to this station,
and Dr. Tatchell, writing in 1909, wonders whether medical
missionary work will appeal to the temperament of those who
dwell in this ' Land of Peace.' He did not remain long in

520 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

uncertainty, for while in 1907 the membership in Anlu was
sixty-eight, six years after it had risen to two hundred and
seventy-four, and when the hospital was visited by Dr. Wig-
field in 1920 he speaks of Anlu as ' the head and centre of one
of the most prosperous Circuits in the District.' The medical
Mission had crystallized the faithful service so long ' held in
solution.' Two years after Dr. Cundall's appointment to
Anlu, the Rev. William Rowley was also appointed to that
Circuit ; and his wife, whose medical service before her
marriage will shortly come before us, at once began to serve
in the same Christlike way the needy women of Anlu. For
some years her work was done in a rented Chinese house, but
in 1913 a new hospital for women was built and opened. It
has been so immediately successful that within a very few
years the new buildings were found to be cramped and
insufficient for the patients who crowded into them.

Tayeh is situated in the south-east of the province, near the
Yangtse. In 1907 work was begun here by Dr. Tatchell.
The following year he was appointed to Hankow to assist
Dr. Booth after the death of Dr. Hodge. His place was taken
at Tayeh by Dr. Pell, who soon acquired land large enough to
allow for the building of a hospital, a Mission house, and a
chapel. A tablet presented to Dr. Pell in 1911 bears the
inscription, ' Kind is his heart and loving is his hand,' and this
was acknowledged in a city in which for years the most deter
mined opposition was raised whenever the Missionary attempted
to secure a foothold. In the Centenary year Dr. Pell was
succeeded by Dr. P. K. Hill, and later on a notable addition
to the staff was made by the appointment of Dr. Chiang.
The latter had completed his medical course in England and
now returned to minister to his own countrymen. WTien Dr.
Wigfield visited this station in 1920 he found him superin
tending the work of the hospital, and exerting a gracious
influence upon men whom the European Missionary would
have found it difficult to reach.

We must now return to Hankow, where Dr. Tatchell had
joined Dr. Booth when Dr. Sydney Hodge was taken away by
death from the ' Hospital of Universal Love.' Dr. Booth
had come to Hankow with Dr. Hodge when the latter returned
from furlough in 1899. He was the special representative
of the Methodist Christian Endeavour Societies in Ireland, and

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 521

they could scarcely have found any one more worthy to
represent them. His first term of service came to an end in
1911, and he returned to Ireland for his furlough. But before
he could return to China he, too, was called to higher service,
and yet another name was added to the long list of those who
have given their lives for China. Dr. Booth was one of the
many gifted medical Missionaries who have not counted their
lives dear unto them. The strong, daring, impulsive boy
developed into a brilliant surgeon and a devoted Missionary.
There seemed to be no limit to his energy, and his gifts were
as varied as they were effective in his use of them. The
tenderness of his heart appeared when the native city of
Hankow was deliberately destroyed by the Imperial troops
in the revolution of 1911. ' He wept like a child,' says Ms
biographer, Dr. Tatchell, when he found that he could not
get to his patients in the Hankow hospital, and the boys in
the school for the blind, to rescue them from what seemed the
imminent peril of being burned alive. For the moving story
of their ultimate rescue the reader must refer to the biography
quoted above. During his furlough in 1912 he underwent a
minor operation, but the germs of malarial fever contracted
in China were in his system, and in the moment of his weakness
these asserted themselves, and he who had consecrated his
brilliant powers to the service of suffering humanity in China
passed into the presence of Him in whose Name his great
service had been rendered.

Since 1912 Dr. Tatchell has borne the burden of laborious
days, and though time and again it seemed as if his health
could no longer endure the strain he put upon it, he still
continued his splendid service, and was in sole charge of the
Hankow hospital when the Centenary year arrived. What
this service has entailed may be guessed from the fact that in
that year there were eleven hundred and fifty patients admitted
to the hospital, while the number of out-patients was no less
then fifteen thousand. The number of operations approached
one thousand. The physical force expended in carrying
through a year's work of such dimensions must have been
very great. When Dr. Tatchell retired from direct missionary
work he was able to look back upon years of worthiest service
in the greatest of all great causes.

In the Centenary year Dr. W. B. Heyward, who had come

522 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

from Tasmania to serve in Hunan, was set apart for special
work in the Union Medical College in Hankow. This had been
in existence four years, and the Missions associated in the college
were the London Missionary Society, the American Baptist
Missionary Society, and the Wesleyan Missionary Society.
Each of these contributed the sum of twenty-five pounds a
year to the college, while their doctors resident in Hankow
took part in the teaching required. By setting apart Dr.
Heyward for this work our Society made a worthy contribution
to the service of medical Missions in China. For just as the
evangelist aims at securing an indigenous Church in the
country where he serves, so the doctor sees quite clearly that
the medical service of the Church can be adequately rendered
only through the ministry of qualified Chinese doctors. It
follows that the work of such an institution is one of first
importance, and it was hoped that the Hankow College would
send out year by year those who, like Hodge and Booth and
Roderick Macdonald, and many another, add to their efficient
skill in medicine and surgery the Christian spirit and devotion
which will make them a blessing to their country and a pride
and joy to their Church.1

Meantime a very necessary development in the direction of
medical work among women had taken place. It was a quite
inevitable extension. The heart sickens at the thought of the
inheritance of pain into which every Chinese woman was born.
Doctors have never dared to disclose all that they have known.
We have stood in silent horror before the grim gates which
conceal a world of suffering revolting and nauseating to the
imagination, with which alone one is able to approach them.
Nor, under the conditions which govern domestic life in China —
and, indeed, all through Asia — was it possible to give adequate
relief in a general hospital such as that in Hankow. Some
amount of alleviation was given to those who were able to defy
conventionalities, and allow the foreign doctor to make a
diagnosis, but this was as nothing in comparison with what
remained untouched. Missionaries' wives must have suffered
much from the sympathy which could never get near enough to
alleviate their sisters' pain. Wrhen Mrs. North came with her
husband to Wusueh in 1882 the rising tide broke through the

1This school was given up (1915) and the work of training medical students
was transferred to the Shantung Christian University at Tsinan, in which the W.M.M.S.
co-operates, and on the staff of which the Society has its direct representative.

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 523

barriers, and a small dispensary was opened in that city.
When, after eighteen months in Wusueh, Mrs. North removed to
Hankow, she determined to continue. It was a heavy tax
which she imposed upon strength barely sufficient to carry
the burdens of home life in a country like China, but love
receives the increasing burden with increase of love, and the
mother's arms make nothing of the growing weight they are
proud to carry. So the dispensary was opened, and the crowd
that besieged it was eloquent of what human need demanded.
An appeal through the Women's Auxiliary in England was
responded to by Miss L. G. Sugden. She had received special
training in nursing and medicine, and though not fully qualified,
she had ' a natural aptitude for the work, and an enthusiastic
daring which stood her in good stead.' She came into the
fellowship of the missionary circle like the breath of a spring
morning. Her gaiety and her gift of song were an infinite
refreshment to jaded men and women. In 1886 she arrived
in Hankow, and some months were spent in learning the
language and helping Mrs. North while a small dispensary was
being built. This was the first building erected for medical
work among women in Central China. Two years after Mrs.
Bell1 came back to Hankow, and at once gave herself up to a
happy collaboration with Miss Sugden. The two women, with
the most valuable assistance of Dr. Hodge, made ' the Jubilee
Hospital ' a true home of healing for hundreds of women.
But in 1893 Miss Sugden returned to England, and during her
furlough she married the Rev. G. Owen, of the London Mis
sionary Society. On their return to China she went with her
husband to his station in the province of Szechuan, where she
at once took up medical work again. But the hardships
endured on the journey, and the difficulties and anxieties
caused during a time of anti-foreign riots, proved too great a
strain, and when her twin sons were born, in a moment she was
gone. Her body was laid to rest with those of her children.
So the first woman who came to bring healing to China's women
laid down her life in pledge of a service which was to continue
for many years.

The burden of the work in the Hankow hospital was bravely
borne by Mrs. Bell. Happily Dr. Hodge was always near and
always ready to help. When the time came for Mrs. Bell to

^eep. 473.

524 MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA

retire she was followed by Miss Lister, a fully trained nurse,
and in 1896 the first fully qualified lady doctor arrived in the
person of Dr. Ethel Gough. After a breakdown which
necessitated a short visit to England, Dr. Gough came back to
Hankow accompanied by Miss Pomeroy, who had accepted the
position of matron in the hospital. During the next six years
a work was accomplished which we cannot attempt to describe,
and when Dr. Gough married the Rev. William Rowley she
still continued to serve in the hospital until she and her husband
returned to England for furlough. Of the service they rendered
in Anlu after they returned to China we have spoken already.
By that time Miss Booth had succeeded Miss Pomeroy, who
had become Mrs. C. S. Champness, as matron in the hospital,
and presently she was joined by Dr. Yo, who after serving as
a nurse in the hospital had obtained a medical diploma in
Canton. Some improvement in the buildings and a reinforce
ment of the staff are necessary if the work is to meet the
enormous demands made upon those who work in this
department.

In the city of Wuchang a dispensary had been opened by
Dr. Porter Smith1 in 1866, and weekly visits had been paid
by doctors working in the Hankow hospital. Mrs. Barber
and Mrs. North, too, had rendered such service as was possible
under existing limitations. But it soon became clear that
nothing short of a hospital is really effective in China, where the
bandages placed upon the wounded limb might be removed to
bind up the feet of some other member of the family, and where
the dressings applied to wound or ulcer might be taken off that
some noisome poultice, recommended by the Native practi
tioner, might be added. During Mrs. Owen's furlough in
England her description of medical work in China had led
Miss Margaret Bennett to offer her service in the same cause.
In due course she obtained her diploma, and arrived with full
credentials in 1899. It was not until 1903 that the hospital
in Wuchang, made possible by her own gifts and the generosity
of her friends in England, was opened, but long before that
time she had found opportunities for the use of her skill by
visiting out-patients. In February of the year mentioned
Miss Shillington joined her as matron in the newly-opened
hospital, and it seemed as if Dr. Margaret Bennett had at last

1 See pp. 466, 510.

MEDICAL MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA 525

realized the conditions necessary to a great and successful
ministry among the suffering women of Wuchang. But in
October of that year she sickened, and the dysentery, so often
fatal in China, quickly ran its course. The service, so full of
the brightest promise, was closed almost before it was begun.
' I am glad I came to China ' was one of her last messages to
her friends in England. ' Glad ' ; for had she not given the
fullest pledge of her consecration to the service of her Lord ?
The alabaster box was broken. What matter ? The fragrance
filled the house, and the Master said, ' She hath wrought a
good work on Me.' The hospital now bears her name as a
worthy memorial, and in 1906 Dr. Helen Randall Vickers
arrived to fill the vacancy and to carry on the blessed service
which blesses him that gives and him that takes. l

1 In later years the shortage of women doctors compelled the closing of this
hospital, and the buildings have for some years been used as a Bible-women's training
school, the medical needs of the women of Wuchang being partly met by hospitals
of the L.M.S. and the American Church Mission.

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

The Year 1905 in China — A Serious Deficit — The Indigenous Ministry
— Wesley College, Wuchang — Boarding Schools — Work among Women
— Education in the Canton District.

THE year 1905 marks the beginning of a new era in the history
of China, and, indeed, of the whole of Asia. The humiliation
of defeat by Japan in 1895 had led to the reactionary efforts
of 1900. Those efforts proved to be futile, and had resulted
in a further revelation to the Chinese of their impotence in
asserting themselves against other nationalities. But when
this was followed by the victory of Japan in her war with
Russia, it became clear to China that she could not afford to
close her eyes to the learning of the West, and that it was
time for her to follow the example of her island neighbour
and secure whatever of power European science could confer.
The sleeping giant of the East awoke at last ; and, to the
bewilderment of those who thought the sleep of centuries would
never be broken, China began to adapt herself to the life of the
world. It was painfully new to her. All but drowned in
mephitic slumber, it was only through agony that she could
regain anything like a consciousness of her individuality and
use her power. That agony is not yet ended, but in 1906 it was
evident enough that China would one day be a power to be
reckoned with, and no longer the helpless victim of other
nations. The new movement showed itself in feverish activity
in things military. Arsenals were planned on an extensive
scale ; barracks were built for the new soldiery, and military
colleges were established. Economic changes were not less
drastic. Railways were surveyed and lines laid down. On
the river the steamboat lay side by side with junks of
immemorial construction, and cotton mills gave notice to
Lancashire of approaching competition in trade. The most

526

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA 527

striking change, and that which most directly affected mis
sionary enterprise, was found in the sphere of education.
This was made, not, it is to be feared, for the sake of knowledge
in itself, but as the means to political power. But even thus
it was an amazing reversal of time-honoured and deeply-
venerated tradition, and it brought with it a startling challenge
to the Christian Church. The old system of verbal
acquaintance with classical authorities was swept away.
Temples were commandeered for schools, and in Wuchang the
Viceroy proposed to purchase from our Missionary Society
the whole block of buildings obtained after such painfully
protracted negotiations, as he wished to erect upon the site a
great central University for China. The Committee was not
unwilling to agree, on condition that suitable sites were granted
elsewhere, and compensation allowed for the buildings to be
removed. These particulars give but the slightest indication
of the educational movement throughout the Empire. To
realize the true measure of the movement we should have to
multiply them a thousandfold. The amazing ferment brought
to all Missionaries much searching of heart. If the Christian
Church in China had been in a position to claim for Christ
the direction of the movement it might within a few years have
become the controlling factor in the new life so suddenly
aroused ; but, with the exception of those Missions which were
connected with American Churches, the Societies had neglected
to develop this branch of the work, if indeed it had ever been
properly established. In 1899 the only English Mission School
that aimed at anything beyond the curriculum of an elementary
school throughout the whole of the Yangtse valley was the
Wesleyan High School in Wuchang, and this was hopelessly
inadequate. In 1906 it provided boarding accommodation
for thirty-six students, and there was no science apparatus
whatever in the school. In the elementary schools there was
a complete lack of trained teachers, and only in the year
mentioned was there any attempt to provide them. The
provision then made was rudimentary, and still further
restricted the accommodation of the high school.1

Missionary education has a twofold object. It aims at
bringing within the reach of all the enlightenment of mind

1 In 1899 when the Rev. E. F. Gedye attended the triennial meeting of the Educa
tional Association, amidst representatives from all over the Empire, he was the only
English teacher representing an English Missionary School.

528 MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

which is characteristic of the Christian faith. It is a true
philanthropy which breaks the fetters of superstition and
ignorance, and the effect of doing this in the name of Christ
has led to some of His greatest victories over the human heart.
But though never a convert were to be found as the result of
such service, the Church is bound to educate, as it is bound
to bring whatever other blessing Christ offers to mankind.
But beyond all this the very growth and efficiency of the
Church itself depends upon the educational service. For the
aim of the Church is to secure an indigenous Christianity
among the people whom it sets out to evangelize, and this
implies an indigenous Ministry, fully equipped and furnished
unto every good work. Nor is this object sought that the
local Church may relieve an overtaxed Society elsewhere. It
is sought in order that the Church thus formed may make its
own contribution to the interpretation of Christ. Not until
all nations have brought their several and peculiar contribu
tions to that high end will the final manifestation of our
Divine Lord be complete.

From this point of view the comparative failure of missionary
education in China during the first fifty years of our work in
that country was deplorable. In 1899, after thirty-eight
years of work in Central China, during which period
the membership of the Church had reached the number
of thirteen hundred and eighty, there was only one
Chinese Minister — the Rev. Chu Sao Ngan — with one assistant
Minister — the Rev. Lo Yu Shan — on the staff of workers. It
must be confessed that this result was disappointing, and the
feeling of disappointment is intensified by the fact that even
fifteen years after a scheme of educational work had been
outlined by Dr. Barber in 1885 the department of ministerial
training was still in abeyance. It was not until 1901 that
theological training was begun in Wuchang, ' in a tentative
way, with a three months' course of study ! '

There were several causes of this delay. As Dr. Barber
found, the official opposition to the obtaining of land by
Missionaries was secret, persistent, and baffling. But the
Mission had been in existence twenty-two years when that
attempt was made, and in 1876 Dr. Jenkins, reporting his
visit to the East, had called attention to the fact that there
was no provision for the training of workers, and had urged

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA 529

that it should be made. The need was acknowledged on the
field as well as recorded in England, but the years passed and
the necessary provision was not made. It is difficult to see
how this department could have been set up in the work as at
first planned in the Wuchang District, unless by the definite
and binding appointment of a Missionary for the purpose.
For the central character of that work was the itinerant
evangelist. In spite of all opposition he made his way into
the inland towns and villages. His infinite patience and
kindly words disarmed hostility and won the hearts of his
hearers. He carried with him the Christian Scriptures, and
the good seed was sown broadcast among a people who identi
fied in the printed page the character of the man who had
brought it to them. Results began to appear ; the method
of work proved effective. It became recognized by all Societies
as the readiest way of securing adherents, converts, and at
length a Christian nucleus in the community. But the
itinerating evangelist cannot at the same time carry on the
continuous work of the school and the college. One or the
other was bound to become secondary, and in China the joy
of bringing men to Christ obscured the vision of the needs of
such men after they had been brought. The Committee in
England was unable for many years to send out men for both
departments of service, and education gave way to evangeliza
tion. There was undoubtedly an immediate and a satisfying
result, but the Church of the future would have been the
stronger if the one service had gone with the other.

Another feature of the Central China Mission which had
something to do with this apparent neglect is to be found in
the supply of an unordained Ministry in the Church. No
other Mission field had so large, or so efficient, an auxiliary as
was to be found in the Laymen's Mission and the Joyful News
organization, and the presence on the field of able and devoted
men to some extent diminished the pressure which might have
compelled the formation of a Native Ministry. But the service
of these men from England was foreign, limited, and precarious.
It could never have taken the place of a Chinese Ministry, and
towards the close of the century this became more clearly
seen. Even so pronounced an evangelist as the Rev. Griffith
John came to see that a measure of educational work and
ministerial training was necessary if the rapidly increasing

530 MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

Church was itself to be evangelistic. In 1904 he wrote 1 to
the effect that

Ten years ago the increasing number of converts, and the changing
aspect of the times, led him to think the education question should now
be faced. A scheme was formulated, and in 1899 the high school was
opened, and the divinity school in the same year. Then followed the
normal school and the medical school. With regard to all of them he
was enthusiastic, and yet bated not a jot of his evangelistic fervour.
It was because he was an evangelist first that he had now become an
educationalist.

Exactly so ; it is the evangelistic work which makes the
educational work imperative.

It must not be thought that our Missionaries were blind to
the necessity of education in the Christian Church. They saw
it clearly from the first, and elementary schools in the towns
occupied were soon in evidence. The setting apart of a
Missionary for educational work was part of the original scheme
outlined by Josiah Cox. In 1869 we find Scarborough working
hard to secure a more distinctly Christian character in the
curriculum of Mission schools. Of David Hill's attitude to this
question we have already written, and in a letter written in
1886 to Dr. Jenkins, in which he describes certain opportunities
for evangelistic work, he goes on to say :

But the equally pressing need of able and educated Native Mis
sionaries weighs on me more and more, and I often recall your vigorous
exhortations with regard to them. The comparative illiterateness of
three-fourths of our Native helpers demonstrates the need we stand in
of more highly educated men as co-workers with us.

Ten years before the writing of that letter Dr. Jenkins had paid
an official visit to the Mission stations in China, and his views
may be cited as representing the feeling of the Secretaries on
this matter. In a letter dated February 15, 1876, he says :

It is too evident that in this country Christian Missions have not
as yet taken hold of the people. Christianity, with one or two excep
tions, has scarcely touched the middle and higher classes. I think if
Missionaries gave more attention to the education of the Natives it
would open their way into influential paths of labour now absolutely
closed to them. If, for example, we could establish an institution in
Wuchang, it would give our Central China Mission a status among the

1 Griffith John, by R. Wardlaw Thompson, p. 532.

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA 531

people which, I am afraid, we are not likely to win under our present
system. Our brethren are preaching, and preaching ably ; and in
the course of a year many thousands hear the word. But, so far as I
can learn, there is no effectual provision for following up impressions
and hoarding results. We have a few members, and one or two small
schools, but unless we somewhat enlarge our policy I confess I do not
see for the future a more satisfactory proportion of success than we
have had in the past.

Yet it was not until ten years after this that Dr. Barber
came to Wuchang. Of the attempt made by him we have
already written. With the appointment of the Rev. E. F.
Gedye in 1893 a new chapter in the history of this branch of
our work happily opened. In 1906 the High School was
removed from its position in the city of Wuchang to a fine
site, affording room for expansion, outside the city walls. It
was high time for seeking enlarged facilities. It would have
been possible to multiply the number of scholars in the school
threefold if suitable premises had been secured from the first.
W7hen the change made in 1906 took place, not only did it
become possible to accommodate a larger number of students
in the high school department, but both the normal school and
the theological college were at last established upon a satis
factory basis. With reference to the former of these, proposals
had been made by other Societies at work in the area that it
should take the form of a school to which each should con
tribute while the management remained in our hands, and
that students from all the contributing Societies should have
the advantage of the training given. In 1909 the Rev. G. L.
Pullan was in charge of the twofold institution. The work
was at first of the most elementary character, some of the
students having only just begun to write. But, elementary
though the work was, the significant fact was that the tide
had turned, and the training of workers had begun on a basis
which was to make it an increasing factor in the work of build
ing up the Christian Church in Central China. Development
was rapid. Four years later the normal school department
was separated from that of the theological institution. The
former was closely connected with Wesley College, as the high
school was now called. The teaching staff was the same in
both, and financial resources and the use of premises were
shared. The Principal of the normal school department was
one of our Lay Missionaries, Mr. A. J. Harker, and there were

532 MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

twenty students in residence. The theological department
was under the care of the Rev. H. B. Rattenbury. There were
six students in residence, taking a three years' course, and one
of these was a graduate of Wesley College who was able to
receive special preparation, studying both Greek and Hebrew.
In the Centenary year the Rev. E. F. Gedye was still the
principal of Wesley College, and he had as assistants the Revs.
A. G. Simon and B. Burgoyne Chapman. These three made
up a staff of which other similar institutions in the East might
well be envious. The fruit of many years of service in which
effort often seemed to be without result came at last, and in
1911 we find Gedye rejoicing with the joy of harvest. There
were then a hundred and fifty students in residence. Of
these twenty-four belonged to the normal school department,
and ten others were taking a college course. The college was
visited by a Presbyterian Minister, and under his ministry a
gracious influence came upon the students. At the close of a
series of services thirty-five of the students rose, and in great
humility, with many confessions of sin and unworthiness,
declared their intention of giving their lives to the work of
evangelizing their countrymen. The hearts of their teachers
were filled with unutterable joy. Years were to pass before
that promise could be fulfilled, and some who made it may not
redeem it at all ; but that act of self-consecration remains the
harvest of years of labour, and the earnest of a still greater
harvest in the years to come.

In the elementary schools much still remained to be done.
In 1902 the Rev. G. A. Clayton describes his first duty on
returning from the Synod of that year. This was to give
notice to the teachers in the three schools of his Circuit that
at the close of the year the schools would be closed by order
of the Synod. ' The grants would not pay for both evangelists
and education.' Even when the normal school had been set
up an adequate supply of trained teachers would only gradually
become available. Meantime Government schools had sprung
up in every direction. Every town of any size had its school
admirably housed and furnished with modern educational
appliances. In the very field in which the Missionary had
been the pioneer he now found himself hopelessly outclassed.
The balance was still more heavily weighted against Mm ; for
the Government also restricted scholastic degrees to those who

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA 533

had passed through its own schools, and the best teachers were
secured by the offer of salaries such as the Mission schools
could not afford. Our school buildings, too, formed a sorry
contrast with those of the Government. Dr. Ritson describes
the Hankow schools in words as terse as they are scathing :
' They are dirty, and cannot be made clean ; they are in
sanitary, and cannot be made sanitary/ The inevitable result
was that our schools began to decline. As Mr. Rattenbury
wrote in a letter quoted by his colleague, Mr. Rowley : ' It
is simply deplorable. Our second generation is being lost to
us.' If the Government schools had been such as Christian
students might attend without injury to faith or morals,
much might have been said in favour of allowing Christian
boys to attend them. But they were pronouncedly anti-
Christian ; many of the teachers were men of notoriously bad
character, and all students were expected to prostrate them
selves twice a month before the Confucian tablet. It is to
the honour of most of the Chinese Christians that they preferred
to send their sons to the Christian school, with all its disqualifi
cations, rather than allow them to be exposed to the moral
and religious perils of the Government school. But the
handicap thus put upon the children of Christian parents was
a heavy one, and should never have been allowed.

There were two boarding schools in the District, one at
Teian and the other at Tayeh. In 1913 two other similar
schools were in existence, one in Wuchang and the other in
Anlu. It is almost incredible, but the fact remains that in
1908 there were no such Wesleyan schools in either of the three
central cities, the population of which, in the aggregate,
amounted to over a million, and with a Church membership
of more than six hundred adults. Well might Rattenbury
declare that it was ' simply deplorable.'

Educational work among girls has for the most part been
carried on by the Missionaries sent out by the Women's
Auxiliary. The womanhood of the Methodist Church has
been worthily represented by those thus appointed. They
have done their work with both skill and devotion, and the
schools for girls in China, as elsewhere, have enjoyed this
advantage over the schools for boys— that their teachers have
been specially selected with a view to educational work, many
of them having had previous training and experience in this

534 MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

department in England, while most Missionaries have had to
acquire their knowledge of method by going on with an
unfamilar work. But the work of the women has suffered
from a lack of continuity in the work of particular teachers.
Not only were these subject to failure in health, as were their
brothers in the service, but it often happened that a lady, after
a few years' service in the schools, married ; and though in
many instances she still retained a perfectly loyal interest in
the work, and kept up a measure of service, yet the work in
the school passed necessarily into the hands of the one who
followed her, and who would have to acquire the use of the
language and experience of Chinese thought and life before
she could become equal in efficiency to her predecessor. These
two causes have resulted in this, that comparatively few have
been able to give more than five years to school work, and
when the difficulty of acquiring the Chinese language is con
sidered, that period of service is all too short. To these
women, however, belongs the honour of opening the first
Mission boarding school for girls in Central China. This was
in Hanyang, and after the death of David Hill the school was
dedicated to his memory. The first lady Principal of the school
was Miss B. H. Eacott, who began the work in 1898, and
afterwards became Mrs. Entwistle. She was joined by Mrs.
Bell, whose name has been so frequently before us.1 This
lady, after she withdrew from the arduous work of the Hankow
hospital, found a deep and holy joy in ministering to the girls
in the Hanyang School. She died in 1905, after twenty years
of service in China — a woman of a most loving heart, and
completely surrendered to the service of Christ. The school
in Hanyang was quickly filled, and many workers have found
it to be a sphere of peculiarly happy service. Nor were they
without such fruit as they desired. Many a girl found her
way to Christ in this school, and its pupils have afterwards
served as nurses in the hospitals of the District, or have gone
out as teachers in Government schools, and in the Mission
schools in Hupeh and Hunan. Even if this provision of
trained workers were not forthcoming, the value of this school
would fully justify its existence ; for the influence of Christian
wives and mothers is bound to tell increasingly upon both
Church and State. Day schools for girls are also conducted

1 See pp. 473, 523-

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA 535

in the larger towns and cities, but, though these are by no
means negligible in bringing the womanhood of China to
Christ, nothing can compare for Christian influence with the
boarding school.

Another institution which is under the direction and manage
ment of the Women's Auxiliary is to be found in the Bible
school for training women in Christian work. This is to be
found in Wuchang, and it is a necessary adjunct of every
Mission in the East. Of the work of ' Bible- women ' we have
already written in connexion with the work done through this
agency in India, and we need not say more here than that this
particular agency finds an ample opportunity in China, where
the special difficulties created by caste do not exist, and where
women enjoy a larger measure of freedom in moving among
the homes of people belonging to every social grade. This
work is bound to develop considerably in days to come. It
represents, on the woman's side, the indigenous Ministry of
the Christian Church, and Missionary Societies will be wise
if they develop this special agency a hundredfold.

In 1912 the only missionary provision for higher education
in Canton was to be found in two small schools, each school
containing about fifty boys, drawn for the most part from
the class of traders. Mr. Bridie concludes a letter to the
Secretaries with the words :

A unique and unparalleled opportunity lies before us. It will soon
pass away if we do not avail ourselves of this great and open door.
Secular schools and colleges will take the place which, if the Church is
wise, she will occupy at once. God forbid that we should fail in our
manifest duty to go forward in the name of our Lord.

In spite of this earnest pleading it appears from the Report of
1912 that ' our South China Mission is lamentably under-
equipped on its educational side.' That the case was not
overstated appears from the table of statistics in the same
Report, from which it appears that in the city in which work
had been begun in 1852 there was, sixty years afterwards, only
one elementary school, with twenty-six scholars on the rolls.
The Report goes on to speak of the project of building a college
at Fatshan, and to express the hope that ' we shall soon be
taking a worthier share in the training of young China according
to Christian ideals.' But if that had been done, as it might

536 MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

have been, fifty years before, the ranks of the Native Christian
Ministry would have been full, teachers for elementary day
schools would have been forthcoming, and an instructed laity
would have given strength to an indigenous Church. Mis
sionary education might well be advocated on this last ground
alone, but when we consider the question of ministerial supply
for Churches springing up in all directions the failure of the
past is seen to be deplorable. Prior to the attempt made by
Hargreavesin 1890 the method followed was for any individual
Missionary to select young men from those under his pastoral
care, and to employ them as colporteurs or evangelists, giving
them time for reading and study. When considered fit for
trial they were introduced to the District Synod and examined.
If successful, they were admitted to the third grade of Catechists.
At least two years were passed in this grade, during which
time the Catechist was employed in preaching, while the
Missionary prepared him for examination at the close of each
year. If he succeeded in passing this test he was admitted
to the second grade, in which he would remain for three years,
until finally he arrived at the status of an ordained Minister.
This method was open to serious objection. The supervision
of the Missionary, fully occupied as he was with Church admini
stration and the work of preaching many times in the week,
was necessarily spasmodic and superficial ; while the candidate
missed the stimulus and formative influence which come from
association with his fellow students. Here and there a man
was found whose force of character was strong enough to
enable him to overcome these disadvantages, but many another
might have become an efficient Minister of the Gospel if he
had received specific and continuous training. The effort
made by Hargreaves to introduce a better method was furthered
by a Chinese gentleman who contributed four hundred dollars
towards the cost of the institution. A few students were
gathered together, and good work was done on their behalf by
Bone and Bridie, who successively took up this work in Canton
after Hargreaves was appointed to the task of establishing
self-supporting Native Churches. Another training centre
was opened and put under the charge of a Chinese teacher at
Om Shan, in the North River Mission District, but this centre
was soon abandoned. From year to year students were sent
into the ranks of the Catechists, and during the Secretarial

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA ^537

visit of the Rev. Marshall Hartley in 1899 two Chinese Proba
tioners were ordained to the work of the Ministry. Bridie
continued to serve in the Theological Institution for eight years,
broken by a furlough. He was followed by the Rev. S. G.
Tope, and in 1909 the work was entrusted to the Rev. E.
Dewstoe. When the project of higher educational work in
Fatshan was put forward, the desirability of associating with
it this work of ministerial training at once suggested itself.
The accommodation in Canton was insufficient, and the
repeated attacks of the disease known as ' beri-beri ' indicate
that there was something lacking on the side of sanitation;
but the advantage of bringing all higher educational work into
one centre, and of thus securing for ministerial training the
greater probability of continuity, was too obvious to be missed.
The Fatshan College was afterwards chosen as a memorial of
the Rev. Henry Haigh. In 1914 it was reported as approach
ing completion.1

Educational work among women and girls in Canton has
been limited by lack of facilities, and it has been interrupted
in its course when these were forthcoming. It began when
Mrs. Piercy joined her husband, and owes its inception to
nothing less than the love of a woman's heart for her suffering
sisters. Few wives of Missionaries have been able to turn
away from the silent yet crying need of womanhood for that
which they find only in Christ, and in every field they have
added some form of work for women to that which the manage
ment of their own homes imposed upon them. In scores of
instances they have laid life itself upon the altar of sacrifice.
Mrs. Piercy was specially qualified for educational work,
inasmuch as she had been trained in Westminster College,
and some years before the formation of the Women's Auxiliary
she determined to move. She won the honour of opening the
first boarding school for girls in China. The difficulty already
sufficiently described of securing suitable premises was over
come by admitting the girls to her own home. This was not
the least of the many sacrifices entailed. It meant unceasing
noise when quiet was necessary for exhausted nerves. It
meant that the strain of oversight was never relaxed, and it
entailed additional and peculiar responsibilities in a country

1 Ministerial training is now (19231 carried on at the Union Theological College
in Canton.

538 MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA

in which such work was regarded with the greatest suspicion.
But the sacrifice was willingly made, and presently two of her
first girls were brought to understand and to accept the love
of Christ. That school was opened in 1854, and when the
news of the formation of the Women's Auxiliary reached her
Mrs. Piercy wrote and urged the needs of the women of Canton.
This was in 1859, by which time there were eighteen girls in
the school. The Methodist women of England responded to
her appeal, and Miss Mary Gunson was sent out to take charge
of the school. She arrived in 1862, but within eight months
her health failed and she returned to England to die.

Miss E. Broxholme was at once sent out to fill the vacant
post, but after five years of service she retired from the work.
Miss Jane Radcliffe, who followed her, was able to remain at
work for twelve years, a comparatively long period of service in
the China field. In 1873 a memorial from the Catechists and
other agents at work in Canton was sent to the Committee in
England praying for an increased number of women who would
be Missionaries to the women of China. The memorialists
pointed out that Chinese women could not easily come to
public meetings, nor could male Missionaries or Pastors visit
them in their homes, and so the conclusion, inevitable through
out Asia, was reached that only the woman could evangelize
the secluded women of the East. In response to this appeal
Miss Jane Rowe was sent out as an additional worker, and in
1875 there were no less than four representatives of the
Women's Auxiliary at work in Canton. Yet in 1878 all four
had withdrawn, and no workers took their places until 1885,
when Miss Annie Wood was sent out. Difficulties had arisen
with reference to the residence of women workers. It was not
always easy or possible for a lady to find accommodation in
one of the Mission houses. It might, for instance, be occupied
by an unmarried Missionary, or the resident Missionary and his
family might have no room to spare for the lady worker. It
was urged that the solution of the problem that thus arose was
to be found in the provision of a hostel entirely reserved for
women workers, but this would have entailed an expense which
the Women's Auxiliary could not meet. The deplorable
result was that the work among women in Canton was aban
doned for seven years. Finally arrangements were made
convenient to all parties, and Miss Annie Wood was able to

MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL WORK IN CHINA 539

serve from 1885 until 1904. A boarding school was built
within that time, the cost of which was met from funds collected
by the Rev. G. and Mrs. Hargreaves during their visit to Australia
in 1888-1889, together with gifts added by Chinese friends to
such work. Other workers followed, and the schools in Canton
became more efficient and more in favour with the people. But
the locality in which the school was placed was not suitable
to its purpose, and when it was decided to make Fatshan the
educational centre of the District the proposal was made to
transfer the girls' school to that city. Provision could then be
made for four hundred girls, and a curriculum drawn up which
would give opportunity to girls who might wish to graduate
in the Canton University. Here, then, we have for the Canton
District an adequate scheme of education. Its possibilities can
scarcely be measured, and it is to be hoped — for the buildings
are not yet completed — that this school will not be starved
either on the side of accommodation or on that of the staff.
We are assured that such a school will not lack ' the supply of
the spirit of Jesus Christ/ and the Fatshan school may easily be
come a great centre of Christian life and power in South
China.

VII
THE LAYMEN'S MISSION

Origin of the Mission— Joyful News Evangelists— A great Service
worthily rendered.

IN our record reference has been frequently made to the work
of unordained Missionaries in Central China, but something
more explicit should be said of this great characteristic of the
Methodist Church in that area. In 1873 the Missionaries in
Hankow were cheered by the arrival of Mr. C. W. Mitchil,
who came out as a volunteer Lay Missionary. Although at first
it was not apparent, Mr. Mitchil was the forerunner of a goodly
company who were to become a distinctive feature of this
Mission, and who have contributed not a little to its success.
During his visits to different Circuits in England David Hill
was led to urge men and women to accept service in China,
either wholly or in part at their own expense, and his appeals
moved many hearts. The first to respond was Mr. George
Miles, who had been working for some time with the Rev.
George Piercy among the Chinese in London. He arrived at
Hankow in June, 1885, and was at once associated with Mr.
Mitchil in evangelistic work. He continued to serve with
simple fidelity until his death in 1921. The next to follow was
Dr. Arthur Morley, of whose able and most fruitful work in
the hospitals we have written elsewhere. Others came, but
after a few years retired from the work. Mr. T. Protheroe,
however, was able to fulfil his course and to see much fruit to
his ministry. He was at one time a local preacher in the City
Road Circuit, but attached himself to the American Episcopal
Mission and served in that Mission as an unordained Missionary
for some years. In April, 1888, he decided to return to his
original communion, and offered his services in connexion with
the Laymen's Mission in Central China. His offer was gladly

540

THE LAYMEN'S MISSION 541

accepted, and Mr. Protheroe continued to serve as a lay
evangelist until 1899, when he was ordained. He con
tinued at work until his death in 1908. An indefatigable
worker, he spent himself freely in the service of his
Master. He was a great preacher, and could command
the attention of a Chinese congregation as few men have
been able to do. The Tayeh Circuit is one of many
memorials of an unstinted service. His death was due to
exposure while administering relief to the famine-stricken
people of Kiangpeh. At the beginning of 1888 the Laymen's
Mission had become a distinct organization. Its representa
tives in England were distinguished men. Mr. J. R. Hill, of
York, was the Treasurer, and the Rev. Dr. Moulton — as true
a Missionary as any who served on the field — was the Secretary.
In 1889 a moving appeal, prepared by David Hill and William
H. Watson, was sent to the younger Ministers and to ministerial
students in England urging the claims of China, and seeking
to enlist their sympathy and, if possible, their service in the
cause so dear to their hearts. Shortly after this Mr. J. L.
Dowson, from the Bishop Auckland Circuit, and Mr. P. T.
Fortune from New Zealand, joined the other laymen in the
District. Neither of these, however, continued to serve for any
length of time. Mr. Dowson became a Minister in America,
and Mr. Fortune returned to New Zealand, where he entered
the Ministry of the Anglican Church.

In 1891 the Laymen's Mission reached what was perhaps the
highest point of its development, in spite of the unrest and
rioting which culminated in the martyrdoms of Wusueh. The
administrative Committee in England was made up of some of
the most influential men among both the Ministers and the
laity, while on the field all the members of the Mission, with
the exception of C. W. Mitchil, who was that year visiting
England, were at work. At Anlu, a town on the river Han,
distant from Hankow about two hundred miles, George Miles
and James Rowe were assisted by two Chinese evangelists — •
Lo Yu San and Li Wen Tsen — and there was every indication
that much fruit would one day be gathered in that corner of
the vineyard. In 1901 there were thirty-eight Church members
with forty-five others on probation in that Circuit. Thomas
Protheroe remained at Wusueh, though his wife had been
seriously injured in the riot that took place there, and had been

542 THE LAYMEN'S MISSION

obliged in consequence to return to England. P. T. Fortune —
the representative of New Zealand Methodism — was at
Hanyang, and Frederick Poole was associated with Dr. Arthur
Morley at Teian. In all these centres the work of evangelizing
the people was done with the utmost devotion, and it was
destined to bear much fruit in after years. The only blank in
the appointments appears in connexion with the school for
the blind in Hankow, for which a Superintendent was not yet
found. It seemed as if this element in the service of the Church
was likely to be as permanent as it was efficient. But in the
course of time the Missionary Society obtained powers to
employ unordained men, thereby securing for such workers a
place in the Synods. When this was done the raison d'etre of
a separate organization ceased, and though for several years
afterwards the home organization of the Laymen's Mission
continued to send out subscriptions for this branch of the
work, it gradually became merged in the general administra
tion of the Society. After the death of Dr. Moulton the office of
Secretary was filled by Dr. Barber, and the Treasurer, Mr. J. R.
Hill, was followed on his death by Mr. Basil Hill.

The story of these unordained Ministers of Jesus Christ will
never be fully told. We may record the names of Missionaries
who came and served and returned, or haply died before their
course was well begun. Developments in organization, the
erection of buildings in which to provide a home for the growing
Church, or the abandonment of work that once promised to
be fruitful — all these may be noted, but who shall speak of
the work itself ? Who will be able fully to describe such men
as Mitchil and Miles, strong by the very simplicity of their
faith, tramping along the dreary causeways which do duty for
roads in China, enduring every imaginable physical discomfort,
•and receiving for welcome, when the day's march was ended,
only an outpoured flood of vile abuse which might easily pass
into violence, and sometimes did so ; continuing in this service
for many days together, never disarmed of their steadfast
patience and forbearance, always ready with a genuine sym
pathy for the distressed, and eager to unfold to the glazing
eyes of apathy or despair the vision of hope, always ready to
declare the Gospel of the grace of God in Christ Jesus ? The
service of such men presents us with one of the most impressive
pictures that human eyes can look upon. It comes nearest

THE LAYMEN'S MISSION 543

of all to that of their own Master and Lord. The Church in
the West has never realized the amazing expression of such
devotion. If in some splendid moment it were to do so, then
in that vision of Christ in His servants the Church would pour
all its wealth into the service which had helped it to see its
Lord, and fresh and beautiful as the dew of the morning would
be the youth of the Church consecrating itself to the same
Christlike Ministry.

There was yet another organization of an unordained
Ministry parallel with the above and equally beautiful in the
spirit of its consecration. We have seen how Thomas Champ-
ness was led to form what became known as ' The Joyful News
Mission,'1 and we have duly noted the appearance of his
evangelists in Africa and in India. In no part of the Mission
Field did greater success follow upon the movement inaugurated
by that whole-hearted Missionary-evangelist than in China.
This is the more surprising because many of those who went
out to work under this system were older than those who were
usually sent out from college, and the difficulty of acquiring
the Chinese language would in their case be accordingly
increased. But partly because the very difficulty of this
field would suggest the sending out of the best men available,
and partly because in no other field has the itinerant evangelist
been so immediately and so markedly successful, the system,
as devised and followed, worked with the happiest results.
Of all those who joined the Central China Mission as ' Joyful
News Evangelists ' only one can be held to have failed, and
most have been conspicuous for the Christlike character of
their service, and for their success in bringing men to Christ.
The Mission was fortunate indeed in securing an agency so
efficient and so devoted. In the course of time some of those
sent out returned to England for one reason or another.
Others took up some form of employment in China, but it is
significant that all of them still accept some form or other of
missionary service as the expression of a devotion which has
never grown cold.

The first two of these evangelists were Messrs. S. J. Hudson
and A. E. Tollerton, and they left England in the autumn of
1888. The former came to China too late in life to become a
really fluent speaker in Chinese, but the latter showed signs

1 See Vol. i., p. 141, and Vol. iv., p. 225.

544 THE LAYMEN'S MISSION

of attaining great skill in the use of that language, and a career
of usefulness seemed to be opening before him, when he was
attacked by small-pox and died at Lungping in 1891. Hudson
was able to complete his first term of service, but died during
his furlough in 1894 from the effects of dysentery contracted
while on the field. The next two were sent out in 1890.
William Argent, whose death at Wusueh we have already
described, was a man of gentle and winning disposition, and
though he, too, was older than most men when they enter the
Mission Field, he was not without promise as a preacher in
Chinese. His companion was Mr. Ernest Cooper, who has
had a distinguished career. On his return to England for
furlough he was ordained to the full work of the Ministry in
1901, and then returned to China. He was the first Missionary
to enter the long-sealed province of Hunan, and both as lay
evangelist and as ordained Minister he gave full proof of his
ministry. He retired from the full work of the Ministry in
1916, but remained in China, where, on the hill station of
Ruling, he continues to render most fruitful service.

After the fatal riots at Wusueh four men were sent out, the
increased number being made possible by the action of the
widowed mother of William Argent in devoting the amount
allowed by the Chinese Government as ' compensation ' to
the service in which her son had laid down his life. Of these
four Mr. J. W. Pell decided to take up medical work, and
graduated at Edinburgh in 1904. On his return to China in
1905 he took charge of the hospital at Tayeh.1

In 1892 four more were sent to China, and of these the name
of Mr. C. S. Champness, the son of a much-beloved father,
at once arrests attention. Mr. Champness entered enthus
iastically into the scheme of service inaugurated by his father,
and was ordained in China in 1912. He continued to serve
at Yiyang, in the Hunan District, and was still at his station
in 1913. In 1920 his health broke down, and this necessitated
his return to the work in England. Two others of his original
companions were also ordained— Mr. P. T. Dempsey and Mr.
W. A. Tatchell. The former is still on the staff of the Wuchang
District ; the latter, after fully qualifying in medicine and
surgery, returned to the field as a medical Missionary, and has

1 Dr. Pell served in the R.A.M.C. throughout the whole course of the war of
1914-1918. He is now in charge of the hospital in Hankow.

THE LAYMEN'S MISSION 545

rendered excellent service in the hospitals of Tayeh and
Hankow. In 1909 he published a work entitled Medical
Missions in China in Connexion with the Wesleyan Methodist
Church. Of this excellent account we have made frequent
use in the chapter on medical work.

All these and others have fully justified the scheme pro
pounded by Thomas Champness. The earnest desire of the
men to fulfil their vocation helped them to overcome the
difficulty of acquiring the language, and many of them became
fluent speakers. They entered into the lives of the common
folk with ready sympathy, and were greatly beloved. Most
of them rendered a service which fell short in nothing of that
rendered by their ordained brethren, and it is to be regretted that
this part of the District organization was discontinued. But
it had within itself elements which made against permanency.
The personality of its founder, and the relation to him of the
men sent out, had much to do with securing the allegiance of
the men under difficult circumstances. When he died the
bond that held them together was removed, and the double
ministerial order could not be maintained. For that was
really the condition of things while this agency existed. To
all intents and purposes the agents of the Joyful News Mission
were doing precisely the same things as the ordained Missionary.
They, too, were wholly set apart for the preaching of the
Gospel. Yet the Missionary Society at home could only act
through those who were directly under its control. Whether
the order and form of Synods could have been so modified as
to allow the two orders to act together in equal responsibility
and control is not a matter which can be discussed in these
pages. The historian is only concerned with the fact that
the compromise effected satisfied neither those who belonged
to the one order nor those who belonged to the other, and the
ordained men felt the irksomeness of the anomalous conditions
more than did the others. At first these conditions were not
insuperable, though even then the ultimate issue was seen to
be inevitable. But after a few years of service the Joyful News
agents were experienced and efficient. They had acquired
the language of the people, and in some instances their influence
was very great. Yet under the inexorable law of ministerial
orders such men might find themselves under the superintend
ence of young men who had but recently arrived in the country
35

546 THE LAYMEN'S MISSION

and who were inferior in weight of judgement and inefficient
by reason of their ignorance — for the time — of the Chinese
language. The situation was rapidly approaching that which
existed in Canada between the local preachers and the ordained
Ministers,1 and it became easier to carry on the administration
of the Church when ministerial orders became simplified by
the cessation of this particular agency. But this should not
be allowed to obscure the fact that the Joyful News Mission
rendered invaluable service at a time when it was difficult to
increase the number of Christian workers, and that almost
without exception its agents proved themselves worthy of
their calling. They won the respect and affection of their
colleagues, and gathered abundant fruit into the garners of the
Church.

1 See Vol. i., p. 427 ff-

SUPPLEMENT

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA IN THE LIGHT OF

TO-DAY *

SOME 1,900 years ago a little man might have been seen
travelling over the roads of the Roman Empire. Generally
accompanied by a friend or two, he entered cities and preached
a strange doctrine. In dress and speech there was nothing
much to distinguish him from many other travellers of those
days. Though a man of culture, he was poor, and rarely had
more than enough money for his own needs. He had a regular
plan of campaign. In most cities, already, was to be found a
group of his own countrymen, doing business there but not
neglectful of religion. To them he first proclaimed the good
news, and if they rejected him, as often they did, those
foreigners who had been attracted by the Jewish religion
would generally give him a patient hearing, and through them
he touched the world around.

It was not his practice to stay long in a place. Nor did
there seem to be need. It is quite wonderful how this little
man went along as a lamplighter, leaving lights shining in his
wake. He was ' poor, yet making many rich.' He opened
no schools or hospitals, though, like his Master, he was full
of works of mercy, and many were the witnesses to the virtue
that proceeded out of him in healing those that were sick and
in distress. Self-support was the order of the day. No one
thought of anything else. A paid ministry was not anticipated ;
even the apostle often worked for his living. The veriest
beginners in the Christian way could be appointed elders.
The members were often richer in this world's goods than
those who ministered to them, and, so far from being financially
dependent on the Jerusalem church, at quite an early stage

1 This chapter was written by the Rev. H. B. Rattenbury, B.A., Chairman of
the Wuchang District.

547

548 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

they were raising a famine fund to help the needy Christians
in Judaea.

Such were the conditions under which St. Paul did his work,
such the immediate results, and it is impossible to have read
so far in the story of our Church in China without realizing
how different has been the experience of those who in that
land have tried to follow in the footsteps of the great apostle.
Through all the pages of this History there has been nothing
quite parallel to the story of the Church in China. The place
that Wesleyan Methodism holds in the great Christian move
ment in that land is, comparatively speaking, not a prominent
one. The area is so vast, the task so immense, that with all
her other commitments it was hardly to be expected that our
Church should have strength to cope with more than a small
portion.

It becomes, therefore, the more needful to relate the
Methodist Church to the Christian movement as a whole,
and to show her among the great movements, Christian and
non-Christian, that through the years have been gathering
momentum and of which the end is as yet hard to foretell.

The history of Protestant Missions in China splits itself up
quite naturally into three main periods of varying lengths but
of quite clearly marked characteristics, and the fourth period
is beginning. Even at the risk of some repetition it will be
to our purpose to pursue our way down this stream of history,
taking note of certain things as we go ; for the present is born
of the past, and the future of the present, and it is by taking
note of what is and what has been that it is possible, with
some degree of confidence, to see through the mists that hide
the future the dim outline of that to which we are coming.

THE EARLY DAYS

From the days of Robert Morison, China was a closed land
whose door was being gradually thrust open by the mailed fist.
A most rabid resistance to everything, as well as to every one,
foreign, culminated in the terrible doings of the Boxer year
and may be said to have ended then.

The story has been told in these pages of the hardships that
missionary life at first entailed. In the lives of David Hill and
Hudson Taylor, in the records of the China Inland Mission,
and in scores of biographies, there is evidence enough that the

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 549

apostles of those days had often to resist ' unto blood.' The
whole country was bitterly hostile and suspicious. There was
no nucleus of fellow countrymen who had already in some sort
laid foundations for an Apostle Paul. Language, habits,
physiognomy, clothing — all emphasized the distinction between
the preachers of this foreign religion and those to whom they
ministered. The ' church in the house ' was well-nigh
impossible. There was no welcome. There were no proselytes,
half-way to Christ. From Emperor to the poorest of the poor
there was nothing but suspicion. People who, allured by the
money that they might gain, ventured to rent or sell property
to the Missionaries, not infrequently found themselves in
prison, and neither threats of Consuls nor persuasions of other
folk availed to secure their release. They had had dealings
with the foreigners ; that was their condemnation. Again
and again the Christian world shuddered at the stories of
massacre. The Chinese are a good-humoured, reasonable,
and able race of men. These massacres bear their own witness
to the way in which the mass of the people were wrought upon
by the leaders of the day, determined to stop at no lengths in
ridding themselves of these preachers of the Gospel who had
come unbidden and unwanted. Christianity, as a good many
other things, was being thrust upon a people who did not want
it and would not even take the trouble to examine it. To go
into the causes of this state of mind is not needful here ; it is
sufficient to state the fact.

These were the days of pioneering, but not like St. Paul's.
Roman citizenship would have been of little use to him in
China. He would have found, perhaps, when once suspicions
had been broken down, a kindly welcome in the countryside ;
later on he might have been shy of even kindliness, for he
would have discovered that this welcome that he thought was
for the Gospel was really just a cloak to get his aid (for gradually
it had dawned on China that foreign powers were strong) in
beating an opponent in a court of law. The officials, who, St.
Luke is always eager to show, were tolerant to St. Paul and
his doctrine, in China he would have found ranged alongside the
whole body of the literati, his deadliest enemies and most deter
mined opponents.

These were the conditions in which the earliest Missionaries
of all Societies worked. Opposed by officialdom and the

550 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

leaders of thought and public opinion, objects of amusement to
the comfortable burgher who from his open shop watched them
being jostled in the street, believed to be capable of unname-
able cruelties and indecencies by the rank and file of the
populace, whose passions could on occasion be excited to
frenzy by skilful innuendo of highly placed men, thought to be
spies in collusion with their Governments by all, is it any
wonder that they saw no easy prospect for the Church of God ?
The only wonder is that they bore it, lived it down, and won.

Those were the days of itinerating, not that the need for it
has gone ; but, then, there was nothing to be done but talk of
Jesus in public and in private as opportunity occurred and to
push out into the country and the homes to which the townsmen
at their New Year festival returned. There was no Church
to shepherd ; the sheep were all astray ; and as these shepherds
went in search of the sheep that were lost they took their lives
in their hands. They never knew what reception they would
get in any town or city ; they had to spend long days and
nights in Chinese inns or on boats ; there were few of them who
had not strange tales to tell of hardships and perils of the way,
and of wonderful deliverances. They sowed in tears and with
hard toil, and they passed away with little sign of harvest.

THE MIDDLE DAYS

That period finally closed at the end of the last century,
which for the young Chinese Church went down in blood.
Even then change had long been in the air. The door had
been pushed open ever so little, but really open, and the
atmosphere was changing. In the nineties reform even tried
to take hold of the Government, but everyone knows the end
of that story. In 1894 little, upstart, Westernized Japan
brought China all in a moment to her knees, and the door went
wider open, and with the utter overthrow of the Boxer move
ment the door was broken off its hinges, never to be used again.
New life began to manifest itself everywhere. In Pekin edict
after edict emerged, giving proof — if proof were needed — of
the change that had transpired.

Railways, newspapers, an efficient Customs Service, an
Imperial postal service, all came, and came to stay. The time-
honoured system of examinations for the degrees that led to
office was replaced by a new system, only on paper at first, of

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 551

Government education from the infant school to the university.
In conjunction with the Western Powers opium was abolished.
It became fashionable to learn a foreign language, especially
English, for was that not an ' open sesame ' to positions in
Customs and postal and other Government services, and to
clerkships in the foreign ports, which were developing beyond
all previous dreams in the opening years of the twentieth
century ?

The progressive Viceroy, Chang Chih Tung, wrote a book
called China s Only Hope, which hope consisted in taking up
without delay the education of the West. He and others
opened mines and mills and started modern industrial life ;
so, fraught with good and evil, Westernization really set in.

For the Church, quick to seize her opportunity, this was a
period of tremendous expansion, especially in educational
work. American Missions, ever ready to lavish expenditure,
in China as at home, upon the education of the young, poured
their wealth into what were struggling private schools, and
made them into flourisliing colleges commanding universal
respect. Our own Wesley College in Wuchang, which, when
Dr. Barber left it in the nineties, was a mere handful of students
who could with difficulty be persuaded to sit in a Christian
school, had by the end of the period developed into a decent-
sized Grammar School, and only the lack of adequate support
from England hindered it from indefinite expansion and wider
usefulness. In the same period, with more substantial funds
at its disposal, the neighbouring Boone College of the American
Church Mission had from a small boarding school of fifty boys
developed into the Boone University, with several hundreds
of students, and was easily the most imposing and best-known
educational institution, private or Government, within the
four central provinces of Honan, Hunan, Hupeh, and Kiangsi.
This sort of thing is typical of the change that came in all the
eighteen provinces. Chinese animus against all foreign nations
is deep-seated and not unnatural. The Boxer year made no
foreign nation popular ; the chastisement that followed even
left a deep-seated resentment that smoulders on. A proud
and self-conscious nation with a mighty past does not take
kindly to being made the happy hunting-ground for foreigners,
be they political, commercial, or religious ; yet there is no doubt
where the judgement of the nation had led them. It was

552 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

necessary to sit at the feet of foreign teachers and learn their
language and their lore ; it was preferable to study abroad and
to seek this foreign instruction at its source. The period saw
thousands of Chinese students in Japanese colleges and
universities, hundreds, thanks mainly to the Indemnity College
in Pekin, in America, and scores in other lands. Their less-
favoured brothers at home were beginning to wear foreign
clothing, smoke foreign tobacco, drink foreign wine, speak
foreign languages, attend foreign schools, and incidentally to
put themselves in the way of excelling foreigners in their own
scholarship. Though they were not attracted to Christianity
as such, this new attitude to all things Western included even
religion in its scope, and, though not convinced that a land
that held Confucius could need any other teacher, at least there
began to be a willingness to listen and to learn.

The process of Westernization had even gone so far that the
worn-out Manchu Dynasty was beginning to play with the
idea of a constitutional monarchy and a popularly elected
parliament. Edicts were issued about these important matters,
and then, on October 10, 1911, a bomb burst in the Russian
Concession, Hankow, and the Revolution had begun. The
slumbering giant who had been turning uneasily in his sleep
was violently shaken awake, and this land of changelessness
had become a place in which it is difficult to keep up to date.
All in a few short months a change had been made, on paper,
from absolute domination by the Manchu foreign power to a
full-blown Chinese Republic that proudly compared itself
with America and with France.

The years that intervened between 1911 and 1922 have been
full of political turmoil and disorganization. There has been
almost incessant fighting between rival factions, in which
there is more than a suspicion that foreign intriguers have once
and again been at work. For a considerable portion of the
time there have been two separate parliaments, each claiming
to be the legally elected and constitutional mouthpiece of the
nation. The people have been the constant prey of soldiers
and bandits, and many have sighed for the flesh-pots of Egypt.
Yet under all the turmoil and in spite of all the bloodshed there
has been no turning back. The country has lived for long
bankrupt in all but name, but has not lost its hopefulness.
Pessimists abound within and without, but those who look

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 553

beneath the surface are amazed at the radical reforms that in
spite of all have taken place. Long ago a keen observer pro
phesied that China would never advance till she had discarded
her cloth shoes and adopted an easier system of writing. Her
footwear, he declared, was only possible in fine weather, and
her complicated system of writing handicapped her sons
several years in the race for knowledge. These signs of progress
have at last arrived ; every one who can afford them wears
foreign shoes, and China no longer stays at home on a rainy
day, whilst an earnest band of educational reformers in Pekin
has established a system of national phonetic script with a view
to unifying the language.

To say that the door is open is to use language altogether too
poor for what has happened. The door is off its hinges, the
windows are shattered, the roof is off, and even the foundations
are shaken. From Pekin chiefly there issues a stream of
criticism on everything in heaven and earth that can only be
paralleled in the most radical centres in the West. Politics,
society, industrial and international relationships, marriage,
the family, religion, and philosophy, are all subjects being
seriously discussed by the leaders of Chinese modern thought.
What is most remarkable of all is that the vehicle for the dis
cussion of these radical questions is the plain speech of the
market-place. A new literary style is being produced, the old
essays in classical style that only a scholar could understand,
much more appreciate, are gone, and serious matters are being
written in the language of the people for the people.

The Christian movement has been influenced by the times
and has influenced them. With the Revolution has come
liberty, if not licence. The certainty of the universal and
eternal significance of Confucius has for the time being gone.
The old order has changed in religion, as in society. Young
men now may, and do, in the more advanced centres, choose
their own wives, and in turn are chosen or rejected by those
whom they desire as helpmeets. In the sacred matter of
religion also increasing liberty of action is allowed. It is the
coming of liberty for which this middle period is mainly signi
ficant. The earlier days were the days of tradition ; these later
days have been those in which liberty has been seen and
followed.

554 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

THE PRESENT DAYS

The present days are the continuation of those that have
just preceded. Enough has been said by way of background,
and it now becomes possible to depict the whole Church of
Christ in China in these new and stirring times. No mere
perusal of the fullest story of what it is possible to write of the
Wesleyan Methodist Church in China could give anything like
a true impression of the Christian movement as a whole. To
give a true picture of Methodism it is necessary not only to see
it in its political and social environment, but in its relation to
other Christian communions and the whole movement of the
Church of Christ. This task must now be attempted.

Let us take the year 1922, and try to estimate at that date
the significance of Protestant Christianity in China. It may be
well to begin at the circumference and work in to the centre.

In all but the most remote and inaccessible parts of the out
lying provinces there are probably very few who do not know
of the existence of the Church. In millions of cases men's
knowledge goes no farther than that, with the added fact that
the Christians worship Jesus and God. Tens of millions
could give no account of what is meant by these names, but
they are conscious of a great new society, with ramifications
everywhere, which has a new worship. Millions have still
never seen the face of a Missionary. Hundreds of thousands
have never passed the door of a Christian church. Yet, some
how, there is a general consciousness that this new Society
means well and stands for helpfulness. In the welter of blood
and political chaos this foreign Church has stood like a rock,
unshaken. Whilst all else was in flux and uncertainty the
Church has been ever occupying new centres. In the carnage
of civil conflict both parties have respected the Church and
both parties have sought sanctuary there. In country and
town alike church premises have been little havens of safety
and peace in the midst of a sea of trouble.

Plague, pestilence, flood, and famine have been added to
social and political unrest, and in facing all these awful chastise
ments Christians, Chinese and foreign, have been in the fore
front of the forces of relief. Huge sums of money contributed
in America, Great Britain, and other Western countries have
been administered by Chinese and foreign joint committees

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 555

on which Missionaries have always been fully represented, and
when it came to disbursements, road-making, dyke-making,
ameliorative and preventive measures, the actual hands
that handled the moneys, and the actual oversight, have been
generally those of the Missionary. He has often been torn by
a conflict of duties, but, seeing the multitude as sheep without
a shepherd, he has had compassion, and though his ordinary
Church activities have had to be laid aside, he has come to
stand for something in society that mere ministering in chapels
would not have brought him to for many years. In times like
these Chinese business men turn naturally to the Missionary
for help. They know nothing of his gods, and care less ; but
they appreciate his personal integrity, and they know a good
and faithful servant when they see one.

The Revolution has had effects something like those caused
by a volcano in eruption. Things from below have been
thrown on the surface and what was on the surface has been
buried beneath the streams of lava. Thus it has come to pass
that long ere Christian leaders dreamed of it they have been
found in the highest places. Already China has had a Christian
Premier and twice a Christian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Men whose names figure in the world-press, like Wellington Koo
and Alfred Sze, are graduates of Mission colleges. In these
days of party warfare promotion for men of worth is rapid,
and the Christian General Feng is one of the men who count
in the nation, and his model army has perhaps done as much
to recommend Christianity to the common people as any other
single event in China. The wonderful thing about that
influence is that it is a matter of less than ten years.

As a link between China and the Church the influence of the
Y.M.C.A. is hard to exaggerate. There are many different
estimates of the religious value of this organization, but it has
to be said that its leaders give forth no uncertain sound, and
they have established an organization that is capable of
increasing directly Christian effort which will in the future
count for much in the aggressive forces of the Church. For
the moment this organization is easily the most popular thing
of foreign origin in the country. It is bringing Christians
and non-Christians together on a social basis. It has
introduced prominent and successful evangelists from the
West and brought them into living contact with scholar and

556 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

official, as well as other classes. It has given another instance
of the social benefits that flow from Christ, and as the years
go by it will be increasingly evident that it has popularized
Christianity among the thinking and spending classes.

In the new Chinese Civil Services, in the development of
industrial life, in the far-flung line of Western commerce, it
would be impossible to proceed without the results of Church
schools and colleges. For the moment, and until Government
schools catch up, the key to the whole of this modern forward-
moving life is in the hands of the Church. Men and women
are passing each year from Church schools out into the world,
and go immediately to positions of responsibility and trust
on which the whole movement depends. The majority are
not Christians, but they can never be as those who have not
had daily contact for a number of years, at the most impression
able period of life, with the Church of God.

The influence of Mission hospitals has been hardly less.
The great medical schools of the country are all Christian.
Even the famous Rockefeller foundation at Pekin would
have been impossible without Christian co-operation. Last,
but not least, the influence of the Church on the new status
given to women is incalculable.

It is for these and other reasons that the Church of Christ
at the present day is powerful out of all proportion to its
numerical strength. Only one person out of every thousand
is a Protestant Christian, yet in the discussions in Parliament
on the question of religious liberty, this one-thousandth was
able to put up a tremendous and sustained fight.

Christianity is by no means of equal strength in all areas.
Speaking generally, the coast provinces, that have been longer
in contact with Christianity and the outer world, are greatly
in advance of the inland provinces, whilst the remoter areas,
such as Yunnan in the south, and Mongolia in the north, are
only beginning to see the Light of the World.

In thus reviewing the influence of Christianity in China at
the present day it is necessary to keep a true perspective and
not to put a weight on facts greater than they can bear. As
an educational, social, philanthropic, and even political force
the Christian Church is of very great significance. Read in
the light of the history of a hundred years, this is a tremendous
statement to make. Read in the light that streams from the

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 557

Cross, where values alter and things are seen as they are, it is
possible to be much too sanguine on the meaning of these
things. This influence is the influence of a very small body
spread out very thinly over an immense area, and whilst it is
pleasanter in these days than in the past to be a Christian
worker in China, he would be a simple man who failed to
realize that in all that has been written it was as easy to
read the Westernizing as the Christianizing work of the
Church.

That institution itself has at length seen the day when the
ordained Chinese clergy of all communions are to be found in
slightly greater numbers than the ordained foreign Missionaries.
Self-support, which was taken for granted in the early Church,
is, speaking generally, not within sight in any communion in
China. There are men and women of outstanding intellectual
ability and spiritual gifts, but they are rather the exception
and prophecy of what shall be than the rule, and it cannot be
said as yet that Christianity has rooted itself in the mind and
heart of the country as the earlier foreign religion, Buddhism,
has done. To the present day Christianity is still, in the
eyes of the average man and woman, the foreign religion,
and as long as it is that there is no place for easy
optimism.

In bringing about the success already achieved, Presbyterians,
Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and
Anglicans, as well as an innumerable host of smaller com
munions, have been working side by side. Numerical results
of the greater Protestant bodies are in the order given, but
of the Methodist body our English Wesleyans are only
a fraction of the whole. In the newly elected National
Christian Council, chosen in proportion to the memberships of
the various communions, only one out of nine Methodist
representatives is a Wesleyan Methodist. That gives the
ratio of the proportionate strength of our American cousins ;
it does not mean that to the Church of the present and of the
future we have no contribution to make. When religion
is the subject under discussion, and hearts have to be considered
as well as heads, it is well to remember that great streams have
often issued from tiny springs. It is not for nought our founder
claimed, ' The world is my parish.'

558 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE

The late Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 will
probably take its place in years to come among the few epoch-
making councils of the Church. For the first time since the
modern missionary movement began there were assembled
together representatives of all the main Protestant communions
to think and pray together over the common task. One
outcome of that conference was a series of smaller conferences
on all the great Mission Fields, presided over by the same
missionary statesman, John R. Mott. Such conferences,
sectional and national, met in China in 1913. Once more all
the main Protestant bodies were represented, once more they
were set to face the task together. By special design, Chinese
as well as missionary leaders were assembled in large numbers.
Much has issued from those conferences, but nothing was of so
much moment as this — that the missionary leaders were
suddenly shocked into the knowledge that something was
wrong.

In the modern Church no other part has been called to face
martyrdom as the Chinese communions have. Chinese and
Missionaries have suffered and died together. The average
foreigner had never realized that there could be anything
galling in his relationship with his Chinese colleagues or sub
ordinates. Yet the story of conference after conference was
the same. Given the opportunity for self-expression, the men
with whom the Missionary had imagined his relationships as
of the most cordial nature expressed their sense of bondage and
oppression in no uncertain terms. There were more sore heads
and sad hearts in that year than at any time before or since,
and people began to think.

The reader who will take the trouble to re-read the story of
this chapter will find on second thoughts that it is all the story
of missionary progress — the progress and performance of men
sent out from other lands. This book is a history of a great
Missionary Society, and the English Methodist rejoices in the
story of the achievements of his Church. Were he a Chinese
and not an Englishman he would doubtless rejoice, but with
a difference.

St. Paul was never tempted to found a Jewish Church in
Greece or Rome. He was poor and they were rich. He was

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 559

always on the wing, and never really settled for long. Condi
tions in China have been very different. Educational and
medical work has involved expensive plant and up-to-date
equipment. Evangelistic work has had to be undertaken in
a new continent, weeks, and months at first, away from the
home base. Comparatively to China's social and economic
conditions, Christian missionary organizations from the West
rank as wealthy corporations. Hence it was not to be wondered
at if imperceptibly, and without altogether understanding
what had happened, the Church had established a very
expensive and complicated machine that seemed to need the
foreign hand for its control, and it was coming to be regarded
as inevitable that the day of handing all this precious and
carefully constructed organization over to the Chinese would
be only after many years.

In apostolic days, with little or no machinery, a place of
equality or independence would have been easily won by the
Chinese Christians. In these modern days it has been long
coming, and at last, in the Mott conference of 1913, the truth
was out. Not only in the eyes of the outsiders, but by those
of its own household, was the Church seen to be a foreign thing.
In the recent 1922 conference of the Chinese Church there
were other illustrations. A survey of the Christian occupation
of China had revealed the fact that there were one
hundred and thirty separate Protestant Societies propagating
Christianity in China, each with its own home board and
organization, and its own denominational affinities and loyalties.
It is arguable that at the present day there is still room for the
greater ecclesiastical points of view, represented by Anglicans,
Baptists, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists, and
Presbyterians ; but what is there to be said, for example, for a
' Methodist Church, North,' and a ' Methodist Church, South,'
perpetuating in China a division of the American Civil War ?
At Edinburgh Dr. Cheng Ching Yi had cried, ' We are not
interested in your divisions,' and in that cry he uttered the
heart of the Chinese Church. These multitudinous divisions
are not the stigmata of Jesus, but the marks of a foreign Church.
The Chinese Christian conscience will have none of them.
This is what the desire for union means amongst Chinese
Christians. Disunion they believe, not to be of God, but of
man, and that man a foreigner. Movements have for long

56o THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

been on foot for union in two directions — first, in the direction
of linking in a sort of federation the Churches in a given area
or province ; and second, the binding together of all the
branches of the same original family into one. Though the
two processes seem to be mutually destructive, a good deal of
progress in both directions has been made. All the Anglicans,
whatever the country of their origin, have organized one
common Synod for China. Lutherans have been getting
together; Presbyterians of all brands have long had some
sort of common organization, and the Methodists are making
similar plans. On the other hand, Congregationalists and
Presbyterians are busy organizing themselves, through local
federations, into one body, which they have ventured to call
'The Chinese Christian Church.' It is probable that the
ultimate solution will be by a combination of the two move
ments. Such a combination does not appeal to the logical
mind, but the Chinese will not be worried overmuch by logic.
The danger of the first movement is that it might end in a
merely national unity ; the danger of the second that it might
belt the globe with strips of catholicity without securing unity
in any single locality. In spite of all dangers the Chinese
Church will tend to unity ; it is even possible that the last shall
be first, and China show Europe and America the way.

The second aim of the Chinese is to deforeignize the Church.
The situation is very complicated. On the one hand, China
needs all the help foreign Churches can pour in in money and
men for many years to come ; on the other hand, there is no
future for a Christianity that is not indigenous. As long as
the outsider believes, and the insider admits, that Christianity
is a foreign thing, Christ cannot come to His own in China.
The solution appears to lie in what may be called the parish
churches.

All over China have grown up in strategic places compara
tively large Mission compounds. On these are placed uni
versities, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions, as well as
foreign residences. They bear to the average church some
thing of the relationship that the old abbeys bore to the
parishes. These compounds do not need less but more sup
port, and yet the more they are helped from other lands the
further does self-support and self-government seem to vanish
away. For apart from a national landslide towards

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA 561

Christianity it will be long years before the Chinese Church
as such can take them over.

It would be all to the good if these compounds were hence
forward regarded as abbeys. Some will do their work and
fall into ruin, others will be taken over by the Chinese Church
as it is able, still others may be merged in some wider local
movement, but the problem of self-support and deforeigniza-
tion does not lie here. It rather lies in the regular Church in
town and country among the people. There it is that Chinese
leadership is counting for most ; there it is that Chinese leaders
can in the almost immediate future come to their own, and
make men realize that Christianity is the religion of China.

A third aim of the Chinese Church is the evangelization of
its own people. A Chinese Home Missionary Society has come
into existence which has stations already established in needy
Yunnan and needier Mongolia. This society aims to give
expression to the missionary consciousness of the whole
Protestant Church of China. It is constantly extending its
appeal and finding support wherever Chinese are formed into
Churches. It enshrines its own ideals of unity and of national
consciousness, and it is far from unlikely that, in the greater
freedom from non-Chinese direction, experiments may be
made and successes achieved that will bring rich reward and
renewed inspiration to the older established Churches. Move
ments of this nature are by no means new within the spheres
of influence of separate Churches. In our own Church in
Central China an early Missionary into Hunan was sent by
the gifts of his Chinese brethren, and ever since that day there
has been a local missionary society in operation. The new
features of the Chinese Home Missionary Society are that it is
a united effort, entirely independent of the Missionaries of all
Societies, a spontaneous effort of the united Chinese Churches
to save their own people.

In theology, so tar, China has produced nothing new, unless
it be the spirit of mutual toleration. There are folk, not
Chinese, in China as in England, who feel it their duty to
divide the Church into two theological camps. Perhaps the
Chinese are too little speculative. Perhaps they might with
advantage be keener searchers for the truth. There, is how
ever, another grace of equal or greater value in the sight of
God, and that is love. Our Western contribution to the faith

562 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN CHINA

is truth, and in the interests of truth we have first split the
Western Church in two and then gone on splitting the parts
that remained, until in the year of our Lord 1922 it can be
recorded that there are one hundred and thirty separate
organizations preaching the truth in China. The only
theological contribution of note made to the recent Shanghai
conference was given by Dr. Timothy Liu, of Pekin. Whether
he is a Congregationalist or a Methodist no one really minds ;
he has had connexions with both branches of the Church, as
also with the China Inland Mission. Probably if he were
asked he would reply he did not mind much what communion
he served as long as he served his Lord and was true to China.
From his lips there fell a phrase that may well be China's
answer to the blunt, hasty, truth-seeking, church-splitting
Christians of the West : ' Let us agree to differ, but resolve
to love.'

These, then, are some of the notes of the Chinese Church of
to-day and to-morrow — unity, liberty, evangelism ; and in
loyalty to our common Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the
Life, the best of all His gifts, the grace of charity.

It is not desirable that the old divisions of the Western
Church should continue for long in China. Methodism as
such, as all the other communions, should probably cease to
be, but into the great United Chinese Church of the future it
will have poured its riches and live again. Its genius for
using laymen in all the activities of the Church, its evangelistic
zeal, its toleration of opinions, its insistence on religious
experience as the basis of the Christian life, will have a deeper
meaning and a wider usefulness in the day when all the
separated children of God shall have been gathered into one.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF EVENTS

1735 Jolin and Charles Wesley sailed for Georgia i. 203

1738 John Wesley returns to England (lands Feb. i). .

Whitefield first visited America . i- 204

1766 First Methodist Society formed in New York by

Embury . . *• 2°6

First Methodist Society formed in Antigua by

Gilbert . . «• 3<>

1765 Laurence Coughlan began preaching in Newfound

land ... i- 259

1766 Robert Strawbridge formed Society in Maryland . 1.209

1767 Coughlan ordained by Bishop of London . i. 260
First preaching-room furnished and consecrated

in New York . . i- 2°8

1768 Request for preachers sent to Wesley from New

York .... ^ 2I1

1769 Robert Williams volunteered for New York and

sailed .
Boardman and Pilmoor appointed to New York .

1770 Whitefield died near Boston i- 2O5

1771 Francis Asbury and Richard Wright sent out to

America . • • i. 214

1773 Rankin and Shadford sent out to America. First

Methodist Conference held at Philadelphia.

Six circuits formed
1775 New York work interrupted by war . i- 246

-83

1778 John Baxter, local preacher, arrived in Antigua . ii. 32

1779 First church in Antigua, built by Baxter . ii. 34

1780 William Black converted in Nova Scotia . i. 284-7

1784 Coke made his first Missionary appeal in England. i. 64-5
Methodist Society in America formed into

' Methodist Episcopal Church of America.'

Asbury ordained Superintendent . i- 252

1785 Coke arrived in New York : made superintendent

of U.S. Missions . \ 25J

Coke associated with Asbury.
Appointment made to Newfoundland .
Two preachers sent to Nova Scotia. First chapel

built at Halifax. First Synod held i. 292-4

Antigua became a station in the ' Minutes ' u. 65

Methodist Societies established across the

Alleghanies *• 245

564

GENERAL HISTORY 565

1761 Moravian Mission opened in Antigua (ii. 3).

1768 Captain Cook explored New Zealand and E. Australia

1775 American War of Independence began (i. 221).

1776 Declaration of American Independence.
1779 First Kafir War began.

1785 Impeachment of Warren Hastings.

566 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1786 Coke visited West Indies ..... ii. 2-29

37-41

1787 Societies formed at St. Vincent, St. Kitts, St.

Eustatius, West Indies .... ii. 56

1788 Coke's second visit to West Indies ... ii. 42
Chapel built at Harbour Grace, Newfoundland . i. 268

1789 W. Black ordained by Coke, at Philadelphia . i. 297
Work opened in Dominica, Nevis, Tortola.

Jamaica visited ...... ii. 4-48

Captain Mackie requested a Missionary for

Bermudas ....... ii. 240

Committee of Management of West Indian affairs

formed in England ..... i. 65

1790 Third visit of Coke to West Indies. A Conference

held . ii. 49-53

Methodist worship established at Spanish Town . ii. 53

1791 Coke visited Normandy and Paris

Work begun in New Brunswick .... i. 299

W. Black, of Nova Scotia, held Mission in New
foundland ....... i. 269

Losee appointed Missionary to Canada by New

York Conference ...... i. 358

Jean de Quetteville and W. Mahy appointed to

France ....... iv. 445

1792 First chapel built in Canada at Hay Bay . . i. 359
Prince Edward Island visited, and a society formed i. 304
A Wesleyan soldier at Gibraltar formed a society

and built chapel . . . . . . iv. 417

1 793 Fourth visit of Coke to West Indies ; Grenada

and Montserrat occupied .... ii. 55-8

Persecution at St. Kitts and St. Eustatius . . ii- 54

Dominica abandoned. McCornock died there . ii. 55
Repeal of Act forbidding preaching to negroes,

West Indies ...... ii. 56

1795 First party of Methodist settlers sent to Sierra

Leone ; a failure ...... iv. 76

1796 Missionary first stationed at St. Bartholomew's,

West Indies. . . . . . . ii. 166

1797 A Negro evangelist sent to Nassau, West Indies . ii. 226

1798 Bermuda Mission opened (1802-8 unoccupied) . ii. 240-6

1799 W. Black visited England, returning with four

preachers ....... i. 309

1800 First Methodist Society in Montreal ... i. 364
Bahama Mission started . . . . . ii. 225

1803 Nathan Bangs first preached to Canadian Indians 1-365

GENERAL HISTORY 567

1786 Death of Frederick the Great.
Wilberforce began his work for slaves.

1787 Blacks transported to Sierra Leone from London.

1788 Sydney made a convict station.

1789 Wilberforce's first speech in Parliament against slave trade.
French Revolution began.

Second Kafir War.

1 792 Carey founded Baptist Missionary Society.
The Monarchy abolished in France.
Moravian Mission began work in South Africa.
Freetown settlement founded.

1 793 Louis XVI. executed. Reign of Terror in France.
Carey arrived in Bengal.

Surrender of Cape Colony to England.

1 795 London Missionary Society founded.
New French Constitution formed.
Final Partition of Poland.

Mungo Park explored the Niger.
Vaccination discovered.

1 796 Napoleon Bonaparte put in command of French Army.

1 797 The Netherlands ceded to France.

1798 Battle of Nile. Bonaparte occupied Egypt.

1799 Church Missionary Society founded.
Napoleon became ' First Consul ' of France.

1800 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland.
Malta ceded to British.

Treaty of Amiens assigned Ceylon to Britain (v. 21).
1803 Restoration of Cape Colony to Dutch.

568 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1803 Work begun in Demerara. Frustrated . ^ ii. 274

1804 Barbara Heck, mother of American Methodism,

died . . i. 354

Second Missionary appointed to Newfoundland . i. 272

Committee of Finance and Advice formed in

England ....... i. 68

J. McMullen appointed to Gibraltar. He and

his wife died ...... iv. 418

1805 First Missionary appointed to Prince Rupert Bay,

West Indies . . . . . . . ii. 159

Eleuthera (Bahamas) occupied. Rock Sound

chapel built ....... ii. 229

1806 District organization introduced into West Indies . ii. 174
Sierra Leone asked for a Missionary ... iv. 77

1807 Morant Bay Chapel built, West Indies . . ii. 93
Gibraltar became Military Station in ' Minutes ' . iv. 417

1808 Joshua Marsden opened work at St. George's,

West Indies ....... ii. 247

Samuel Marsden (Australia), approached C.M.S.

re New Zealand ...... iii. 167-8

1809 Upper Canada separated from New York Con

ference ....... i. 373

Mission started at Trinidad, by T. Talboys . . ii. 211-12
C.M.S. industrial Missionaries started for New

Zealand. Detained in Australia . . . iii. 168-9

1811 Bahamas District formed ..... ii. 133
First Missionaries, G. Warren and 3 laymen, sent

to Sierra Leone ...... iv. 76

1812 W. Black retired. Nova Scotia put under British

Conference ....... i. 315-16

T. Bowden, Methodist schoolmaster, arrived in

Sydney ; started Society . . . iii. 18

G. Warren died in Sierra Leone. Rayner in
valided home . . . . . . iv. 77

1813 Inaugural meeting of Missionary Society held in

Leeds, Oct. 6 i. 48

Women's educational work started in Newfound
land by Mrs. Busby i. 272

Serj. Kendrick wrote from the Cape, requesting

Missionary .... iv.240

Dr. Coke sailed for Ceylon, December 31 . . i. 272

1814 John Bass Strong sent to Montreal by English

Missionary Society ... i- 375

First landing in Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

Preaching begun ..... iii. 169

Dr. Coke died at sea. His companions proceeded

to Ceylon and opened Mission . . v. 24

1815 Newfoundland made a separate District from

Nova Scotia ...... i. 275

GENERAL HISTORY

1803

1804 Bible Society founded.

Napoleon became Emperor of France and King of Italy.
L.M.S. sent German Missionaries to Ceylon.

1805 Battle of Trafalgar.

1806 Cape Colony again ceded to Britain.

1807 British Slave trade abolished.
Peninsular War began.

1809 Massacre of the crew of the Boyd by Maoris.

569

1812 War began with United States.

Baptist Missionaries arrived in Ceylon (v. 22).

1813 Germany's revolt against Napoleon. Battle of Leipzig.
Peninsular War ended.
Australian explorers cross Blue Mountains.
East India Charter renewed. Door open to Missions in India
(v 144).

1814 Napoleon abdicated and retired to Elba.
Treaty of Vienna.
Acquisition of Ceylon.
End of War with United States.

1815 Waterloo. Napoleon banished to St. Helena.

57o METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1815 First chapel built at St. John's .... i. 276
Th. Hodge, freedman, began preaching at Anguilla ii. 168
Haiti first occupied (irregularly) . . . ii. 133
Abaca occupied . . . • • ii. 231
Samuel Leigh appointed as first Missionary to

South Seas. Landed August 10 . iii. 22
W. Davis and wife arrived Sierra Leone. Mrs.

Davis died .... iv. 77~8
First Missionary meeting in Manchester

J. Lynch wrote to Committee ve visiting Madras . v. 177

1816 Francis Asbury died . . • 1-255
Mission opened among Wyandotts, Ohio . . i. 448
First Missionary offices taken in City Road . i. 99
Jamaica District formed . . . • ii- 133
Work started at Parramatta and Castlereagh,

Sydney ... . iii. 23

Barnabas Shaw and wife landed at the Cape ;

established first Mission Station at Khamiesberg

(Lilyfontein) ... iv. 241-4

Trincomalee, North Ceylon, opened up . v. 30

Sergeant Andrew Armour acted as Assistant

Missionary in Colombo . • v. 58

New Testament printed in Sinhalese . v. 62

First Missionary appointed to Bombay (Mission

abandoned 1819) . . . v- 375

1817 Auxiliary to British Missionary Society formed in

Nova Scotia . . . • • • • i- 3*7

Plan of a general W.M.M.S. approved by

Conference .....•• i. 72

Mission House located at 77 Hatton Garden.

' Missionary Notices ' published . . i- IQ6

First Jamaican Synod held ii- 73

Methodist Class first formed at Tobago ii. 220

Hodge visited St. Martin's, West Indies, but was

expelled . . ii- W

Samuel Brown and wife arrived on West Coast of

Africa. Mrs. Brown died . . iv. 78

Another Missionary sent to South Africa, to join

B. Shaw ... iv. 245-6

Jacob Links, a Namaqua, made Assistant Mission
ary, South Africa . . iv. 245-6
Work began in Normandy by Quetteville and Toase iv. 446
W. Ault died in Batticaloa, N. Ceylon v. 29
English School built at Jaffna. Point Pedro

opened up ....•«• v- 34

W. Lalmon, Burgher convert, became Assistant

Missionary in South Ceylon . v. 61

J. Lynch arrived in Madras ; preached at Nega-

patam v. 177

GENERAL HISTORY 571

1815 Congress of Vienna adjusts European boundaries. Br. Guiana,
Ceylon, C. Colony, Mauritius, Trinidad, Tobago and Malta
ceded to Gr. Britain
' Holy Alliance ' formed

1816 C.M.S. Mission opened in Travancore.
Elizabeth Fry began her Prison work,
American Bible Society founded.
English harvest failed. Riots and distress.

1817 Marathi War in India.

Act passed for West Indies regularizing slave marriages in

Church of England.
American Board of Missions began work in Turkish Empire and

Palestine.
C.M.S. opened Mission in Benares.

572 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1818 Conference adopted settled Constitution of

W.M.M.S., and added third Secretary to staff . i. 73-77

First Missionary appointed to Tobago, West Indies ii. 220

Anguilla appeared as regular Station in Minutes.
W. Lawry sent as second Missionary to New South

Wales iii. 29

First Maori grammar published by T. Kendal . iii. 170

Charles Cook arrived in France ... iv. 446

D. J. Gogerly sent out to take charge of Press,

Colombo v. 63

1819 Missionary again appointed to St. Martin, West

Indies. Chapel built ... ii. 171

Methodist Missionary compelled to leave Haiti . ii. 265

Preacher stationed at Grateful Hill. First Mis
sionary meeting held there . . . . ii. 118-9

Marsden's second visit to New Zealand, with

recruit .... iii 170

First Chapel opened in Sydney . . . iii. 20

Ceylon Districts divided into North and South . v. 67

Robert Newstead attempted pioneer work at

Riligala ... v. 70

Don Cornelius Wijesingha entered Ceylon

ministry ....... v. 61

Harvard of Ceylon returned to England through

ill-health ... v. 68

Chapel built at Royapetta, Madras . v. 180

1820 Partition of Upper and Lower Canada between

M.E. Church and W.M.S. . i 3§7

Work begun in Labrador. Abandoned 1829 i. 480

Missionary appointed to Montserrat . ii- I72

Work re-opened in Trinidad . ii. 218

Antigua formed its own Missionary Society . ii. 138

Australian Auxiliary Branch of B.F.B.S. founded iii. 28
Leigh invalided home. Carvosso and Mansfield

appointed to New South Wales . . . iii. 33. r7J
Controversy on Australian Methodist Noncon
formity .... iii. 39-4*

Methodist soldiers formed class at Hobart . iii. 67

W. Lawry appointed to Friendly Isles iii. 268
W. Shaw and wife arrived in Algoa Bay. Preaching

allowed at Cape Town . • iv. 248-9, 260

J. Baker and J. Gillison arrived on West Coast,

Africa. Gillison died . . iv. 78

Elijah Hoole and James Mowat arrived in Madras v. 181

Titus Close began Tamil work in Madras . v. 180

Negapatam occupied ... v. 180
Robert Newstead completed Portuguese version

of New Testament ... v. 69

1821 Turk's Island occupied, West Indies . ii- 233

GENERAL HISTORY

1818 S.P.G. re-organized.

Ross and Parry started on Arctic exploration voyage.
C.M.S. entered Ceylon.

573

1819 Birth of Queen Victoria.

Singapore seized for British.

1820 Cape Colony opened to immigrants.

Five thousand settlers arrived in Algoa Bay

George IV. became King

C.M.S. opened Tinnevelly Mission, and began work in Bombay.

L.M.S. entered Madagascar, and started work in Bangalore.

M.E. Church began a Mission to North American Indians.

1821 Trial of Queen Caroline.

574

1 82 1 W. Walker appointed to Mission among Black

Natives in Australia . . . . . iii. 149
Leigh returned with wife to proceed to New

Zealand, and two others .... iii. 34

Work started in Van Diemen's Land ... iii. 66
W. Shaw settled in Assagai Valley (Salem) ; built

chapel ....... iv. 250

Yellow Chapel, Grahamstown, built ... iv. 250

Mandarenee, Gambia, opened by J. Morgan . iv. 123
Elijah Hoole and J. Mowat sent to start Mission

in Mysore ....... v. 181

Bangalore and Seringapatam visited ; Mission

suspended, 1822 ...... v. 181

Charles Cook settled near Nimes ... iv. 446

1822 Torry set apart as Missionary to Red Indians . i. 449
First Missionary stationed at St. Ann's, West

Indies ........ ii. 108

W. La wry began his work in Friendly Isles . iii. 35, 269

Morgan retired to St. Mary's from Mandarenee ;

opened school . . . . . . iv. 125

W. Threlfall arrived in South Africa, and joined

W. Shaw at Salem ..... iv. 246-7

Baker invalided home from West Africa ; W. Bell

arrived and died . . . . . . iv. 79

1823 Destruction of Bridgetown Chapel, West Indies, by

mob ; Shrewsbury escaped .... ii. 200

Leigh established first Methodist settlement New

Zealand — ' Wesley dale ' . . . . iii. 178

Leigh's health failed ; he sailed for Australia ;

was wrecked ...... iii. 182-4

Australian R.T.S. started ..... iii. 28

W. Shaw toured in Kaffraria ; ' Wesleyville '

settlement started ..... iv. 255-6

Settlement proposed in Macarthy's Island, West

Africa ....... iv. 121

Huddlestone and Lane died in West Africa . . iv. 80

Piggott and Harte arrive : Harte died . . iv. 80

1824 Upper Canada formed Conference of its own

under M.E i. 387

First chapel built at Scarborough, in Tobago . ii. 222

Marriage of slaves legalized in the Bahamas . ii- 235
Two school-chapels opened in Wesleydale, New

Zealand iii. 185

W. Walker withdrawn from Australian Mission

to Blacks iii. 149

Morgan began work in Macarthy's Island, West

Africa iv. 127

Ceylon and India severed in administration . v. 186

James Lynch returned to Ireland . . . v. 186

GENERAL HISTORY

1821 War of Greek Independence (1821-9).
Gambia became British colony.
Mexico declared independent.

575

1822

George Canning, Secretary for Foreign Affairs (1822-7).
First female C.M.S. school opened in India.
Zulu Wars of Extermination.
Maori Wars (1822-7).

1823 Emigration of 1,000 Blacks from Tortola to Trinidad.
Slave rising in Demerara.
Reginald Heber made Bishop of Calcutta.
British Society formed for Abolition of Slavery.
' Jamaican Resolutions ' created agitation (ii. 86-7).
Henry Williams, C.M.S., arrived in New Zealand (iii. 170)

1824 L.M.S. Missionary, J. Smith, died under imprisonment in

Demerara (ii. 282).

Erection of first lighthouse on South African Coast.
First Burmese War.
Church of Scotland begins Foreign Missions work.

576 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1825 Canadian Missionary Society formed ... i. 412
Honduras Mission began. T. Wilkinson sent out ii. 133, 291
Launceston, Tasmania, occupied . . . iii. 70
First Maori adult conversion reported in Bay of

Islands . . . iii. 191

Morgan invalided home from West Africa . iv. 127
W. Threlfall and Jacob Links and Johannes Jager

murdered by bushmen in Namaqualand . . iv. 246-7

Kama, a Kaffraria chief, baptized by W. Shaw . iv. 281
Donald Macpherson appointed to Alexandria, J.

Keeling to Malta .... iv. 422-3

W. Barber appointed to Gibraltar ; died 1828 . iv. 419

Estate of Kollupitya, Colombo, purchased v. 72

1826 ' The Credit ' Christian settlement built for Red

Indians ...... i. 453

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick became separate

Districts .... i. 3l8
Wreck of the Maria : five Missionaries, two wives,

and children perished . ii- 139

First District Synod held in New South Wales "iii. 42
Cape Town became a Circuit, with Wynberg and

Simonstown .... iv. 260

French services began in Paris . iv. 447

Stockholm occupied ... iv. 426
Training Institution opened in Colombo (closed

1829) • v- 72

Peter Percival and J. C. George arrived in Ceylon v. 33

Mysore Mission re-opened by J. F. England . v. 187

1827 Ed. Fraser, coloured Preacher, appointed to

Warwick, Bermuda . ii. 252-3

Third station opened in Kaffraria, at Butterworth ;

W. J. Shrewsbury appointed . . iv. 258

Wesleydale, New Zealand, destroyed by raiders ;

Missionaries forced to retire, January 10 . iii. I93~4

New Zealand Mission re-opened at Hokianga by

J. Hobbs and Jas. Slack in September . iii. 199

Nath. Turner and wife transferred to Tonga . iii. 198. 284

J. Harper projected agricultural settlement for

Australian aborigines . . iii. I50"1

Chapel opened at Poonamalee . v. 187

1828 The Christian Guardian first published as official

Canadian Methodist paper . i. 421

Upper Canada separated from M.E. Church i. 395

First Wesleyan day school opened in Kingston,

West Indies ... "• 92

Test Trial of Whitehouse for preaching at St.

Ann's "• IJ3

St. Denis Bauduy, coloured assistant Missionary,

re-opened work in Haiti "• 266-9

GENERAL HISTORY 577

1825 Commercial panic in England.

House of Commons passed judgement against rioters at Bridge
town.

First C.M.S. Native clergyman ordained in India.

1826 C.M.S. began work in Egypt and West Indies.
Annexation of Assam.
First public meeting of S.P.G.

1827 Battle of Navarino.

First Protestant Missionaries landed in China.

1828 Trial by jury introduced into Cape Colony.
Test and Corporation Acts repealed.
Duke of Wellington, Premier.
Robert Peel leads Commons.

578 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1828 Wesleyan Chaplain appointed to Macquarie Har

bour, Tasmania ..... iii- 69

King Tubou attended Christian worship . iii. 288-9
Six Missionaries died at Sierra Leone within the

year iv. 83

Elijah Hoole returned to England from Madras . v. 187

1829 Bridgetown Chapel rebuilt . . . ii. 210
Prince Lolohea, first Tonguese convert, baptized . iii. 292
First Maori baptism at Manyungu . . iii. 202
Jos. May, Yoruba convert, became assistant

Missionary at Sierra Leone .... iv. 94

Morley settlement formed in Kaffraria . iv. 258
Calcutta Mission started by Thos. Hodson and

P. Percival v. 189

1830 Methodist emigrants landed at Swan River ;

preached at Perth . . iii- 121

King Tubou baptized . . iii- 294

First Maori baptism . • iii- 202-3

Buntingville and Clarkebury occupied . iv. 258
Appeal from Winnenden, Germany, for a

Missionary .... . iv. 461

Dr. George Scott appointed to Stockholm iv. 426

1831 First Maori Class-meeting ; Native Agency begun iii. 203
Work begun in Vavau ; King Finau abolished

idolatry . . . iii- 3<>2
Jos. Orton sent out as superintendent New South

Wales with three others . . iii- 49
Wesley Chapel, Cape Town, opened, and one built

at Grahamstown ... iv. 250
Gottlieb Miiller sent as Mission House agent to

Winnenden ...... • iv- 4^2

Chapel erected for English worship in Bangalore v. 202

1 832 Slave rebellion and persecution in West Indies ;

Lament died in prison ... . ii. 96-116
J. Cupidon appointed to Macarthy's Island . iv. 129
Dr. W. H. Rule sent to Gibraltar . iv. 420
Work attempted at Cadiz . . iv. 420
T. Hodson appointed to Mysore Mission (Banga
lore) from Calcutta . v. 203

1833 Upper Canada united to British Conference i. 395
Royal Proclamation of religious toleration in

West Indies ii. 107

Work opened in St. Lucia . ii- 224

Demerara District formed ; J. Mortier, Chairman ii. 285
King Finau baptized. He died. King George

succeeded ....... m- 3°3

First great Kafir Missionary meeting at Wesley ville iv. 237

GENERAL HISTORY 579

1828

1 829 Passing of Catholic Emancipation Bill.

Sati abolished in India by Lord Bentinck (v. 146).
Duff sailed for Calcutta.

1830 Accession of William IV. Earl Grey Premier.
Opening of Manchester and Liverpool Railway.
Kingdom of Greece proclaimed.

C.M.S. ordained first Indian clergyman.

C.M.S. began work in Smyrna and Abyssinia.

American Missionaries entered China.

Aborigines of Tasmania deported (iii. 156).

' July Revolution ' in Paris. Louis Philippe made King of

France. France acquired Algiers coast.
Revolt in Netherlands. Belgium seceded from Holland.

1831 Exeter Hall opened.

Reform Bill introduced. Political agitation.
Garrison began Anti-Slavery movement in U.S.A.
Polish insurrection. Russia absorbed Poland.

1832 Reform Bill passed.

1833 Death of Wilberforce.

Slavery Abolition Bill passed.
Mazzini formed ' Young Italy ' party.
Tractarian Movement began.

580 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1833 W. B. Boyce published first Kafir grammar iv. 259
Baralong Missionary settlement removed to

Basutoland iv. 266

Request for Bibles from Cape Coast schoolboys . iv. 151

Work opened in Calais, Lille, and Boulogne iv. 447

1834 Four Missionary Secretaries appointed i. 167
Special West Indian Fund opened in England on

Emancipation Day . . . • ii. 320
W. Woom organised printing department at

Hokianga, New Zealand . . iii- 207
First chapel opened in Perth ; Missionary appealed

for • iii- 1 21-2

Van Diemen's Land became separate District . iii. 73

Jos. Dunwell sent to Cape Coast Castle iv. 151-2

Work in Alexandria and Ionian Islands abandoned iv. 423

Vaudois District visited, thirteen Societies formed iv. 448

Kafir war devastated Wesleyville and Butterworth iv. 271

1835 Parliamentary grants made io West Indies

schools ... ii- 332
Cross and Cargill sail for Fiji from Tonga . . iii. 312-13

Turner sailed for Samoa . . iii- 321

Chapel opened at Lifuka . . iii- 326

The Island of Ono embraced Christianity . iii. 412

Jos. Dunwell died at Cape Coast iv. 152

Jaffna Central School opened by Percival . v. 35

Definite policy adopted for South India v. 192
T. Hodson preached first Kanarese sermon in

Bangalore ... v. 206

1836 Development of Alderville as industrial centre for

Red Indians . . f- 4^2

Academy at Coburg, Upper Canada, opened i. 433

Superintendent of Schools appointed for Jamaica ii. 332
Mission to Blacks in Australia re-started by

Orton iii- *5*

Jos. Orton appointed as chairman in Van Diemen's

Land . . . . . fii- 54

J. McKenny became chairman New South Wales iii. 54

Jos. Orton first preached in Victoria . iii- 85
R. M. MacBrair appointed for translation work,

West Africa .... iv- 129
Mr. and Mrs. Harrop, and Mr. and Mrs. Wrigley

arrived at Gold Coast. All died . iv. 153
Printing-press set up in Basutoland ; grammar

printed ... iv. 267
Civic restrictions enforced on preaching in

Germany iv. 462

1837 Home Missionary Society formed in Newfoundland i. 343~4
The Pennock Revolt in Jamaica . ii- 330-5
Society formed at Samana, Haiti ii- 49

GENERAL HISTORY

1833

1834 Slavery ceased in West Indies on August 3
Emancipation of slaves in Cape Colony.
Kafir Wars.

1835 Five American Medical Missionaries landed in China

1836 C.M.S. opened Mission in Travancore.

1837 Accession of Queen Victoria.

Rebellion among Red Indians (i. 462).

Flight of the Matabele to country north of Limpopo.

582 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1837 Two converts martyred in Friendly Isles . . iii. 208
War with heathen chiefs in Tonga . . . iii. 314
The Island of Eua evangelized .... iii. 315
Society formed at Melbourne .... iii. 85-6
Colonists landed in South Australia, and formed

Society hi. 103

Societies formed at Bathurst, Cape Coast and

Macarthy's Island ..... iv. 87

Barnabas Shaw returned to England for six

years ........ iv. 260

W. Shaw visited Fingos and established Mission
stations at Newtondale, Healdtown, Kamastone
and Durban ...... iv. 284

T. L. Hodgson became chairman, Cape Town . iv. 313

Jonathan Crowther appointed General Superinten
dent for India and Ceylon . . . . v. 193

T. Hodson occupied Gubbi, Mysore ... v. 205

1838 Hunt and Calvert landed in Fiji, December 22 iii. 390
Swan River stationed, West Australia . iii. 56
First Chapel built at Melbourne ... iii. 86
Mission to aborigines begun at Buntingdale, South

Australia .... iii. 86

First Chapel built at Adelaide . iii. 104

W. Longbottom wrecked near Adelaide ; retained

as minister ....... iii. 106

Gambia and Gold Coast Districts separated . iv. 94

Thomas Birch Freeman and wife arrived Cape

Coast Castle, and built first Chapel there . iv. 153

Benj. Clough, chairman South Ceylon, invalided

home, died 1839 ... v. 74

Miss Twiddy sent out to Jaffna . v. 36

1839 J- Waterhouse sent out as General Superintendent

of Missions in Polynesia and Australia . . iii. 217

Fiji constituted separate District . iii. 38°

Gospel and Catechism preached in Fijian . iii. 395
Freeman started for Kumasi and received by the

King ... fv. 155

Vaudois made into separate Circuit . iv. 448

1840 Hudson Bay Company invited Methodist Mission

aries to evangelize Hudson Bay Territory.
J. Evans and three others appointed . i. 467
Canadian Conference separated from British i. 439
First Negro candidate sent to Richmond College iv. 91
Freeman visited England, returning with rein
forcements ..... iv. 155
Methodist Society formed at Lausanne iv. 450
Mission Press set up in Bangalore, under Garrett v. 209
Squarebridge died of cholera at Kunigal, the

Mysore v. 208

GENERAL HISTORY 583

1837 C.M.S. began Zulu Mission.

1838 First steamship crossed the Atlantic;
Colonial Church Society established.

1839 Aden occupied by British.
Chartist rising began.

' New Zealand ' Company sent out settlers (iii. 231),
King George of Tonga issued Code of Laws (iii. 326)
First British Medical Missionaries landed in China.

1840 War in Tonga-land (iii. 316).

Treaty of Waitanga made Maoris British subjects (iii. 232),
Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.
Penny Post instituted.
First China war.

584 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1841 Opening of ' Centenary Hall/ Bishopsgate i IOI_2

Jas. Evans invented a Syllabary for Red Indians ' i 468

Coke Memorial Chapel opened in Jamaica . ii L6

Institution for training agents opened at Vavau iii' tIQ

New Zealand District divided into north and south iii' 222

Freeman re- visited Kumasi with Brooking . jv x-7
Industrial undenominational Mission founded at

Lovedale, South Africa ... iv

Dr. Andrew Kessen sent to Colombo . .' v 8
Girls' school opened in Galle. Miss Douglas sent

out

1842 Theological training began in Canada,' at Victoria

College . g

Training work began at Accra . . . iv 157

Freeman welcomed to Abeokuta by chief . iv' ^3

Work among English opened in Durban, and

chapel built ....
Dr. Scott recalled from Stockholm and Mission

abandoned ... .

1843 Millerite agitation in New England

Rob. Young visited West Indies as deputation

Wairoa Valley affray

Cloudy Bay Mission dispersed, New Zealand

Hunt became chairman of Fiji District

First two Australian probationers stationed '

Training school opened at King Tom's Point

West Africa ...

Freeman visited King of Dahomey, and Togoland T'IOO

T. Hodson returned to England from the Mysore v ' 200

[844 Largest church in Canada opened in Montreal . i 40I

Turk's Island included in Bahamas District ii' 4qQ

Caen, Switzerland, occupied ... iv 4-2

Great meeting in Mysore to promote English'school v ' 270

1845 Ruatan Island, West Indies, first visited by

Edney ....

King Tubou died, Tonga . iii' ^8

Rotuma Island occupied by Native Agent (Fiji) .' m 468

Political disturbances in Switzerland affected

Mission ...

1846 Revival in Tonga-land . ' .' "ffi^aaq
First Missionary stationed in Ono

First edition of Kafir New Testament published ! iv. aso

Work began in Swaziland .... iv ' 296

C. Cook and M. Ogier obliged to leave Switzerland

•••

'
'

1847 Canadian Conference and British Missionary

Society re-united .... i 4Q2

First chapel opened at Burra-Burra, South'
Australia

0 • 111. 112

bomosomo abandoned for Mbua, Fiji

40Q

GENERAL HISTORY 585

1841 Local self-government granted to Canada.
Niger expedition organized.
Livingstone sent to South Africa (L.M.S.).
Bishop Selwyn, C.M.S., went to New Zealand (iii. 224).
Treaty of London concluded.
New Zealand became a Crown colony.

1842 Treaty of Nanking, cession of Hong Kong and opening of

five ports.
British force occupied Natal.

1843 Afghanistan entered and Kabul taken.
Rewa Wars in Fiji (iii. 403-4).
Spanish Haiti became independent (ii. 496)

1844 The Mormons settled at Great Salt Lake.
C.M.S. first sent Missionaries to China.
Rebellion in New Zealand, under Hone Heke (iii 237)

1845 Sir John Franklin's Arctic Expedition.

1846 Repeal of Corn Laws.

End of First Sikh War.

Adoption of Free Trade by England (ii. 356).

1847 ' Reform ' Agitation in England (1847-54) (ii, 360)

586 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1848 Dr. Beecham addressed Colonial Secretary on

behalf of Maoris ...... iii. 240

Opening of College at Three Kings, Auckland, for

Maori youths . . . . . . iii. 246

Lyth and Calvert made first Missionary voyage

round Fiji Isles . . . . . . iii. 449

W. Shaw visited Thaba Nchu, Basutoland . . iv. 267

John Hunt died ...... iii. 390

1849 The Wesleyan, weekly paper, started in Nova

Scotia i. 335

Mount Elgin Institution for Red Indians opened

in Hudson Bay Territory .... i. 473
' Canterbury Pilgrims ' landed at Christchurch,

New Zealand ...... iii. 251

King of Lakemba baptized .... iii. 420

Jos. Roberts, Chairman of Madras, died at

Palaveram ....... v. 199

Mysore became separate District (except Tamil

Circuit) ....... v. 212

1850 Bermudas attached to Nova Scotia District . ii. 252
Wesleyan Emigrant Friend Society formed at

Melbourne ....... iii. 91

Third chapel opened at Surrey Hills, Sydney . iii. 131

Tungi, chief at Mua, baptized .... iii. 330

First Missionary meeting at Mbau, Fiji . . iii. 450

George Piercy sailed for Hong Kong . . . v. 432

1851 Cholera epidemic in West Indies ... ii. 357
Melbourne constituted a separate Synod . . iii. 9°
Emile F. Cook appointed to Cevennes . . iv. 452
Piercy entered Canton ..... v. 433
Percival, Chairman North Ceylon, returned to

England ; succeeded by R. D. Griffith . . v. 39

Richmond Hill property, Galle, secured . v. 79
William Arthur became Missionary Secretary

(1851-68) v. 208

Work began among Tamil coolies of Demerara . ii. 378

1852 Robert Young visited Australia as deputation . iii. 135-7
Mr. and Mrs. Coin's, lay educational workers,

appointed to Lakemba, Fiji . . . iii. 422

Webb, of Tonga, died. War on heathen chiefs . iii. 332-4

First French Conference held iv. 452-3

John Kilner arrived in Ceylon . . . v. 38

Thos. Cryer died from cholera in Madras . . v. 214
Mr. L. Garthwaite, of Westminster College,

appointed to Bangalore educational work . v. 270

1853 Eastern Haiti transferred to Bahamas District . ii. 501
Last cannibal feast, Fiji. Elijah Varani murdered iii. 456-7
King George of Tonga visited Sydney and Fiji . iii. 336

GENERAL HISTORY 587

1848 Soulouque proclaimed himself Emperor of Haiti (ii. 500).
British sovereignty proclaimed between Orange and Vaal Rivers.
Suppression of Chartist rising in London.

End of Second Sikh War. The Panjab annexed.

Second French Republic constituted.

Free constitution granted to Germany.

Mazzini and Garibaldi set up a republic.

Gold discovered in California.

Austria and Hungary united under Emperor Francis Joseph.

1849 M.E. Church began work in Bremen (iv. 462).
Repeal of Navigation Acts.

Local self-government granted to Australian colonies.

1850 Fugitive Slave Law passed in U.S.A

Garibaldi defeated. The Pope re-instated in Rome.
First Red Indian clergyman ordained by C.M.S.
Tribal Wars in Fiji (1850-52).

1851 Gold discovered in New South Wales (iii. 133).
First Basuto War began.
Great Exhibition in London.
Louis Napoleon seized absolute power.
Palestine Mission begun by C.M.S.

1852 Second Burmese War, ceding seaboard to British.
Louis Napoleon proclaimed Napoleon III.
The ' Sand ' Convention acknowledged S.A. Republic.
Gold-diggers flocked to Australia.
Treaty of British Government with King of Lagos (iv. 162).

1853 First railway train run in India.
Russia invaded Turkey.
Fijian Wars.

588 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1853 Miiller retired from active work. Steinlen

succeeded him ... . . iv. 463

Josiah Cox and W. R. Beach sent to China v. 434

First Synod in Canton . . v. 435
Bangalore Tamil Circuit attached to Mysore

District ... v. 268

1854 Affiliated Conference of Australasia, Canada, and

Eastern British America formed . i- 192
Hudson Bay Mission transferred to care of

Canadian Conference ... i- 475

Lay representation begun in Synod Committees . v. 240

King Thakombau of Mbau embraced Christianity iii. 459

South Australia constituted separate District iii. n8
British Conference formulated plan for separate

Australian Conference . . iii. 138

First chapel built in Tembuland iv. 305

China breakfast meeting inaugurated . v. 440
Mrs. Piercy opened girls' boarding school in her

house ... v. 537

Educational work for Veddahs (Ceylon) abandoned v. 38

T. Hodson returned to the Mysore as Chairman . v. 272

1855 East and West Canada united under one Affiliated

Conference . ... i. 5°7

New Conference of Eastern British America formed i. 351

Essequibo and Berbice Circuits formed, West

Indies . . . *• 377

Fijian Old Testament completed by Hazelwood . iii. 444

Australian Conference constituted ; D. J. Draper,

Chairman ... • &• 99, 14°

Horton College opened at Ross, Tasmania . iii. 77~8°

Fiji and Tonga Missions committed to Australian

Missionary Society "i. 140

J. S. Thomas killed in a raid, Pondoland .
Mrs. William Shaw died . |v- 298

Natal constituted a separate District . iv. 294

R. D. Griffith appointed to chair of Madras.

Invalided home and died . v. 215

1856 Daniel West sent to Gold Coast as deputation

from Mission House; W. West appointed

Financial Secretary of Mission on Gold Coast . iv. 163

Kafir Old Testament completed by W. B. Boyce . iv. 259

25,000 Kafirs died of starvation

William Shaw returned to England . iv. 298

Canton vacated during war . v. 438

Dr. Kessen returned to England

1857 King Thakombau baptized, Mbau "i- 4^4
W. West became Chairman of Gold Coast.

Freeman retired . . |v- l64

Barnabas Shaw died .... iv. 256

GENERAL HISTORY 589

1853 Elected House of Representatives constituted, New Zealand

(iii. 240).
Land League formed by Maoris (iii. 241).

1854 Crimean War began.

Florence Nightingale went out to Scutari.
Representative legislation introduced in Cape Colony.
Orange River government given over to Boers (iv. 280).
First American Treaty with Japan.
C.M.S. began Peshawar Mission.
Second Niger Expedition.

Responsible government given to Newfoundland

(i- 345)
Fall of Sebastopol.

Treaty of Paris concluded Crimean War.
War with China (1856-60).

Indian Mutiny broke out (i. 113).
Strangers' Home for Asiatics opened.
Niger Mission begun by C.M.S.

590 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1857 Chief Molema built chapel and founded a Society

at Mafeking iv. 335

Daniel West died at Gambia . . . . iv. 164

Baptism of Subramanyam Iyer in Madras . . v. 218

1858 Ladies' Committee formed in London for ' the

Amelioration of the Condition of Women in

Heathen Lands ' iv. 20-22

Miiller died. W. B. Pope and W. B. Boyce sent out
to inspect work in Germany. John Lyth

appointed to take charge . . iv. 463-4

Dr. Cook died .... iv. 454

War in Fiji. Nandi Mission House burned . iii. 445

Piercy visited Fatshan .... v. 439

Madras Mission House wrecked by mob . v. 219

E. J. Hardey died from cholera in the Mysore . v. 273

British soldiers at Karachi asked for a Minister . v. 376

1859 Labrador Mission re-opened . i- 4^o
Miss Beal, lirst Missionary sent out by Ladies' Com
mittee to Belize iv. 24

First number of Occasional Paper issued by Ladies'

Committee .... iv. 21

J. Kilner appointed to chair of North Ceylon v. 41

Tumkur (Mysore) first stationed with European

Missionary ...... v. 275

D. Pearson sent as Chaplain to Barrackpur, Calcutta v. 350

1860 Ladies' Committee sent a teacher to Fiji . iv. 24
Training College for teachers opened at Demerara ii. 38°-3
Demerara and St. Vincent Districts divided ii. 384
Ruatan, Honduras District, first occupied by

Missionary .... • ii- 43 x
Fletcher translated three Gospels and Catechism

in Maya . "434

Theological Training College opened at Lausanne iv. 457
Richard Green sent to investigate prospects in

Italy ... iv- 478

Dr. Jobson visited Ceylon . v. 80
Miss Wildish and Miss Churchward, first Women's

Auxiliary Missionaries, sent to the Mysore v. 275

Miss Mary Scott appointed to Negapatam . v. 275

1861 Ladies' Committee sent Miss Eacott to Jaffna

Boarding School ... . iv. 25, v. 44

William Arthur visited our German Mission iv. 465

Josiah Cox made great appeal for China . v. 460

R. Green and H. J. Piggott appointed to Italy .^| i. 115 &

Benedetto Lissolo, Italian Minister, accepted onj- ^ 478-9

trial ..... J

The Harvest Field first issued from Mysore Press . v. 276

S. Cocking died in the Mysore . . v. 277

Broadbent and Highfield sent to Calcutta . v. 350

GENERAL HISTORY 591

1857

1858 Indian Mutiny suppressed and government of India transferred

to British Crown.

Treaty of Yeddo opened Japan to British commerce.
Fenian Movement began in Ireland.
Treaty of Tientsin.

Speke and Burton discovered Lake Tanganyika.
Universities' Mission to Central Africa started.
Christian Literature Society founded (v. 218).

1859 American Missionaries began work in Japan.
War between Austria and France.
English Volunteer Force formed.
' John Brown's Raid ' in Virginia.

1860 Abraham Lincoln elected President, U.S.A.

South Carolina and other States seceded from Union.

Maori Wars.

War with China. Pekin taken.

Indian coolies introduced into Natal.

Kingdom of Italy established (i. 127).

1 86 1 Death of Prince Consort.

American Secession War, 1861-65.

Cotton Famine Fund opened for distress in Lancashire.

Alexander II emancipated forty million serfs in Russia.

Lagos became British possession.

Opening of the first Italian Parliament (iv. 499).

Count Cavour, Italian patriot, died.

Griffith John (L.M.S.) entered Hankow.

592 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1862 Negro rising in St. Vincent .... ii. 388
British Guiana made a separate District . . ii. 411
King George revised Tongan Code . . . iii. 336
W. West visited Kumasi ..... iv. 167-8
Miss Mary Gunson sent to Canton . . . iv. 31, v. 538
Rue Roquepine chapel opened by Morley Punshon

in Paris ....... iv. 447

Piggott moved from Ivrea to Milan . . . iv. 481
Ralph Stott appointed to minister to Hindus in

Natal iv. 303

D. J. Gogerly, Chairman South Ceylon, died. R.

Spence Hardy succeeded .... v. 80

1863 Missionary Jubilee Fund raised .... i. 122
Richmond College purchased for missionary

training ....... i. 123

First English service held in Potchefstroom . iv. 328

Ladies' Committee sent a teacher to Italy . . iv. 29

R. Green invalided home from Naples . . iv. 481
T. W. Smith Jones sent to Italy. He proceeded

to Naples . iv. 488-94

Work opened in Shimoga, Mysore, by J. S. Banks v. 276
W. O. Simpson introduced Christian Lyric singing

in Madras ....... v. 221

Theological training begun in Madras . . . v. 221
Karur, Negapatam District, first stationed with

European Missionary . . . . . v. 222

1864 First Convert baptized in Hankow . . v. 466
Theological Institution and Normal School opened

in Galle v. 79

Ebenezer Jenkins and W. O. Simpson returned to

England v. 222

Tiruvalur, Madras, first occupied . . v. 220

1865 Calvert visited Rotuma, and appointed W.

Fletcher there .... iii. 468
Lyth retired from Germany. J. C. Barratt

succeeded him .... . iv. 465

Orange River Free State made separate District . iv. 311

W. Shaw became President of Conference . iv. 298

Hankow made separate District . v. 443

David Hill and W. Scarborough arrived in China v. 466

1866 Centre of North Italian Mission moved to Padua

Miss Annie Hay sent to boarding school, Milan iv. 490-1

Graaf Reinet occupied . . iy- 3°4

Kandy, Ceylon, re-stationed . . v. 82

First hospital erected in Hankow . v. 510

Sudder Street Chapel, Calcutta, opened v. 351

Military and English work begun in Lucknow . v. 351

1867 Training institution at Healdtown, South Africa,

established . . • • iv. 319

GENERAL HISTORY 593

1862 Appeal of Government officials to C.M.S. for Mission in Kashmir.
Speke and Grant (C.M.S.) discover source of Nile.

1863 Liberation of slaves in Dutch colonies.
First Chinese clergyman ordained.
Madagascar Mission begun by C.M.S.

The Prince of Wales married Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
Britain ceded Ionian Isles to Greece.
Prince George of Denmark accepted throne of Greece.
Rebellion in Poland (i. 127).

1864 John Lawrence, Viceroy of India (1864-69).

Denmark ceded Schleswig-Holstein to Germany.
Gordon captured Nanking, (v. 438).

1865 American Secession War ended.
Lord Palmerston died.

1866 China Inland Mission began work.

First electric cable laid across Atlantic.

' Seven Weeks' War ' between Prussia and Austria.

' Barletta Massacre ' of Protestants near Naples (iv. 494).

1867 C.M.S. began work in Madras.

Fenian outrages in Ireland.
38

594 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1867 Samuel Mathabathe converted, and founded

' Good Hope Mission ' . . . ' •. ; iv. 337-9

1868 W.T. Brown appointed lay Missionary at Barcelona iv. 429
Two colporteurs appointed in Shiuchou . . v. 444
R. Spence Hardy, Chairman South Ceylon, died

in England ....... v. 83

1869 G. Sargeant returned to Jamaica as Chairman . ii. 394-5
Ladies' Committee sent out Miss C. E. Beauchamp

to South Africa ...... iv. 309

J. Whiteley shot during Maori raid . . . iii. 243
Miss Cartwright sent to Ceylon ; Miss Scott to

Colombo ....... v. 101

Home Committee voted ^1,000 for premises at

Kandy, Ceylon ...... v. 82

G. T. Perks and William Gibson visited Italy

officially. Six Italian Ministers received from

1 Free Italian Church '..... iv. 492

Annual Synods inaugurated .... iv. 496

Girls' school opened in Fort, Mysore City . . v. 278

Theological training begun in the Mysore . . v. 281

1870 Barbados legislation affected grants to Mission . ii. 407
Dan. Thorpe, schoolmaster, entered Native

Ministry at Freetown . . . . . iv. 104

Vienna became a station ..... iv. 466

Dr. E. P. Hardey joined Dr. Porter Smith in China v. 511

1871 Provincial Synods established in South Africa . iv. 321
Charles Pamla, African evangelist, ordained . iv. 291
Work initiated in Rome by Francesco Sciarelli . iv. 500
J. Kilner visited South Ceylon District . . v. 84
Anti-foreign outbreak in Fatshan. Dr. Wenyon

began medical work . . . . . v. 511

First grant sent to Calcutta by Ladies' Committee iv. 34
B. S. H. Impey appointed to Kimberley diamond

fields ....... iv. 312

Bankura, Calcutta, first appeared in stations . v. 352

1872 W. Shaw died in England ..... iv. 299
B. Tregaskis, Chairman Sierra Leone, secured

repeal of Land Tax . . . . . iv. 100
Manaar, South Ceylon, stationed by Tamil

Minister ....... v. 43

Training institution opened at Waiblingen,

Germany ....... iv. 466

Head quarters of Italian Mission moved to Rome iv. 501

1873 Mission to Tamils begun in Colombo ... v. 86
Collegiate school opened in Colombo ... v. 84
Kalmunai occupied by Ceylonese Minister . v. 43
Mr. C. W. Mitchil, Laymen's Mission, arrived in

Hankow ....... v. 540

GENERAL HISTORY 595

1867 Dominion of Canada constituted.
Household suffrage passed (i. 128).

1868 Insurrection in Spain.

Revolution in Japan. Mikado became sole Emperor.
Basutoland annexed to British Empire.
Mr. Gladstone became Premier.
Abyssinian Expedition.

1869 Suez Canal completed.

Pacific Railway, New York to San Francisco, opened.
First English Missionary landed in Japan (C.M.S.).

1870 Diamonds discovered at Kimberley (i. 132).
End of Maori War.

Franco-German War began (i. 127).

Italians re-possessed Rome, and Bible Society's agent entered
the city (iv. 500).

1871 Parliamentary Committee on East African Slave Trade
Siege of Paris.

Treaty of Frankfort terminated Franco-German War.

1872 Vote by ballot adopted in parliamentary and municipal elections
Introduction of responsible government in Cape Colony.

1873 Ashanti War. Kumasi taken by Wolselev (1874)
Death of Livingstone.
Carlist insurrections in Spain. Republic declared.

596 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1873 Work began in Kwangtsi . . v. 470
M. E. Mission, Wusueh, handed over work to W.M.S. v. 470
Girls' school started in Lucknow by Ladies' Com
mittee .... • iv. 38

1874 ' Wesleyan Native Home Mission ' originated in

Natal • iv. 298

G. Blencowe went to minister to miners at Pilgrim's

Rest, Transvaal .... . iv. 331
' Ladies' Committee ' became ' Ladies' Auxiliary

for Female Education ' . . . . • iv. 41

Church built at Naples . . . iv. 499

Mission Press established at Batticaloa, Ceylon . v. 49

Wesley College, Colombo, opened . . v. 84

Josiah Cox returned to England through ill-health v. 470

1 875 Union of Canadian Conference with Methodist New

Connexion ....-•• *• 5°9
Nassau high school raised to a college under H.

Rivers .... • ii- 479~8o
York Castle high school and theological college

opened, Jamaica . . . . ii. 395

Country of Apollonia first visited, West Africa . iv. 174
J. Kilner returned to England, succeeded by Ed.

Rigg (Ceylon) .... v. 46
Sergeant Goodwin, Methodist, went out to

Secunderabad . . • • • • v. 311

1876 Dr. Kessen arrived in Jamaica, broke down, and

returned to England . ... ii. 397

High school opened at Cape Coast . . . iv. 185

Rev. G. T. Perks visited South Africa officially . iv. 322

High school built at Galle . v. 84

J. Kilner appointed Missionary Secretary . v. 45

Miss Eastwood arrived for girls' school, Galle . v. 92

First Chinese Minister stationed ... v. 464

Famine orphanages opened in South India . . v. 229

1877 Fifty new stations reported opened in West Africa,

1874-77 . |v- J77

Church opened in Rome . . . iv. 499

Robert Foster went to Italy to assist Piggott . iv. 510
T. G. Selby began work in North River District,

China v- 447

H. Little's industrial schools, Karur, started . v. 230

Ebenezer Jenkins became Missionary Secretary . v. 222

1878 Marmaduke Osborn visited West Indian Districts . ii. 412
Mrs. Wiseman became Secretary of Women's

Auxiliary ... • 1V- 43
Boarding and training school for girls opened at

Point Pedro, Ceylon v- 47

GENERAL HISTORY 597

1873

1874 Disraeli became Premier.

Fiji Isles ceded to Britain (iii. 466).

1875 Restoration of Bourbon dynasty in Spain (iv. 429).
Prince of Wales paid a State visit to India.

Britain purchased shares in Suez Canal from Khedive.

Annexation of Transvaal.

Insurrections in Slav States against Turkey.

Mr. Moody's Mission in London.

First Keswick Convention.

Persia Mission adopted by C.M.S.

Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union began.

1876 Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India.
Russo-Turkish War (i. 126).

Nyanza Expedition started.

1877 Turkish Army surrendered to Russia.

1878 Second Afghan War began.
Treaty of Berlin (i. 126).
Cyprus ceded to Britain.
Transvaal political disturbances (iv. 332).
Second Lambeth Pan-Anglican Conference.

598 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1878 Women's Auxiliary workers withdrawn from China

until 1885 v. 538

Brewer, Nightingale, and David Hill injured in

riots ....... v. 472

Work for Telugus begun in Madras by Burgess

and B. Wesley v. 231

W. Burgess and H. Little visited Haidarabad . v. 312
Calcutta District separated from Lucknow and

Benares ....... v. 363

Tumkur boys' orphanage built, the Mysore . . v. 283

1 879 W. T. Brown ordained and appointed to Minorca iv. 429
Training Department added to Jaffna institution v. 47
Anglo-vernacular school for girls built at Galle . v. 90
New ' Metropolitan Church ' opened at Cape Town iv. 315
Girls' high school, Lagos, opened . . . iv. 230-1

1880 John Kilner visited South Africa officially . . iv. 322
Owen Watkins made Chairman of Transvaal and

Swaziland iv. 330

Work carried to borders of Lower Soudan. Little

Popo occupied ...... iv. 204

Mrs. Godman formed girls' school company, Sierra

Leone .... . iv. 101

' Busy Bees ' inaugurated by Mrs. Wiseman . iv. 48

Central China Tract Society formed ... v. 472

Haidarabad first appeared in stations . . . v. 312

1 88 1 Nevis, West Indies, became entirely self-supporting ii. 422
Women's Auxiliary first Annual Report published iv. 48
Madras North witnessed first community move
ment v. 232

First Chinese Minister ordained .... v. 464

Central China Prayer Union formed ... v. 475

Benares first stationed . . . . . v. 364

1882 Daniel Msimang, convert, re-opened work in

Swaziland iv. 297

W. H. Maude returned as Chan-man to Sierra

Leone iv. 106

Book depot opened at Cape Coast by W. M.

Cannell ... ... iv. 184

Local District Committees of Women's Auxiliary

formed in Bolton, Bristol, Leeds, and

Manchester • iv. 50

Girls' boarding school opened in Kalmunai,

Ceylon v- 47

Dispensary for women opened at Wusueh . . v. 523

Work begun among Gonds .... v. 366

1883 West Indian Conference instituted, with ten

Districts ii- 453~7

GENERAL HISTORY 599

1878

1879 Zulu War began (i. 132).
Nihilists active in Russia.
Mass Movement in Ongole, B.M.S. 3,500 baptisms.

1880 Lord Roberts' success terminated Afghan War.

Church of England Zenana Missionary Society founded.

1881 Boer Republic established after Majuba (i. 132).
Alexander II. of Russia assassinated.
President Garfield, U.S.A., assassinated.
Anti-Semitic League formed at Berlin.

War in the Soudan between the Mahdi and Egyptian forces.
Congo Free State formed, financed by Belgium.
St. Gothard railway tunnel opened between Italy and Switzer
land.
Rendition of Mysore State to Native Prince (v. 289).

1882 Occupation of Egypt. Battle of Tel-el-Kebir (i. 131).
Second Mission begun in Egypt by C.M.S.

First Missionary Exhibition at Cambridge (C.M.S. ).
Korea opened to foreign intercourse (i. 136).
Boers occupy Bechuanaland (iv. 344).

1883 Baghdad occupied by C.M.S.

Paul Kruger elected President of South African Republic.

6oo METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1883 New church built for coloured people in Cape

Town iv. 315

Easter offerings for Women's Auxiliary introduced iv. 49

J. T. F. Halligey became Chairman of Lagos

District, and developed work in Yoruba country iv. 209-11
South African Conference formed (excluding Trans
vaal and Bechuanaland) .... iv. 324

Riots in Canton closed hospital temporarily . v. 513

First Kanarese Minister, Theophilus Luke,

ordained in Bangalore . . . . . v. 289

Normal school opened at Shimoga, the Mysore . v. 287

J. Milton Brown transferred to chair of Calcutta,
from Ceylon . . . . . . . v. 354

Chapels built at Secunderabad and Trimulgherry.

Mission house purchased at Chadarghat . . v. 317

1884 M.E. Church of Canada, Primitive Methodist, and

Bible Christian joined the Wesleyan Conference

of Eastern British America ... i. 509

King Thakombau of Fiji died ....
Gambia District left in charge of African Ministers

until 1894 iv. 142

5,000 acres of land purchased at Pretoria ; called

Kilnerton . . . . . . . iv. 363

Miss Agnes Palmer appointed as first medical

worker, Madras ...... iv. 52

J. G. Wheatcroft Brown sent to Barcelona.

Madrid visited ...... iv. 430-1

Mrs. Scarborough and A. W. Nightingale died in

China v. 473

New high school building erected in Mysore City v. 290

Girls' boarding school built at Secunderabad . v. 317

Karim Nagar occupied. Mrs. Benjamin Pratt

began medical work . . . . . v. 321

Ebenezer Jenkins visited India officially . . v. 322

Royapetta school, Madras, raised to second

grade college ...... v. 233

1885 Christian marriage laws enacted for West Africa . iv. 180

Owen Watkins met Daniel Msimang at Mahamba,

Swaziland iv. 339-40

R. F. Appelbe began ministry in Mafeking. New

chapel built ....... iv. 344-5

Medical women workers sent to Secunderabad and

Hankow ....... iv. 52

First May Missionary Meeting of Women's

Auxiliary ....... iv. 50

Galle and Kandy Districts separated ; under

Nicholson and Langdon . . . u £>..- v. 87

Mission to Uva, Ceylon, opened by W. H. Rigby . v. 93

GENERAL HISTORY 601

1883 The Mahdi annihilated Egyptian Army under Hicks Pasha.
First Women's Union started for C.M.S.

1884 Third Reform Bill passed, giving household suffrage to counties.
General Gordon hemmed in by Mahdists at Khartoum.
British force sent to Gordon's relief.
German colony founded in the Cameroons, West Africa.
British and German Protectorates established in New Guinea.
China and France at war (v. 514).

1885 Development of gold -mining in the Transvaal (i. 132).
Colonization of Mashonaland began (iv. 380).
British South Africa Company formed (iv. 380).
Gordon perished at Khartoum, January 26.
Upper Burma annexed.
Bechuanaland made British Colony.
British Protectorate proclaimed in Somaliland.
King Leopold of Belgium proclaimed sovereign of Congo Free

State.

Mission opened at Aden (C.M.S.) .
Bishop Hannington murdered in Uganda.
C.M.S. started Gordon Memorial Mission Fund.

602 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1885 Mr. G. Miles, of Laymen's Mission, joined Mitchil

at Hankow . . . . . . : ;.-,"// v. 541

Mission premises at Shuichau wrecked . . v. 448
Negapatam became a separate District, under

H. Little ....... v. 253

First Bengali Minister ordained .... v. 354

S. Rahator converted at Igatpuri ... v. 325

Haidarabad became separate District ... v. 322
Disturbances over street preaching in Haidarabad

District ....... v. 323

First baptisms at Gallipalli, Haidarabad . . v. 321

1886 Gold Coast and Lagos Districts separated . . iv. 177
Wesley Church, Kimberley, erected. Work in

' compounds ' begun ..... iv. 312-3

Owen Watkins and D. Msimang toured in Zululand iv. 343

Organized opposition experienced in Bohemia . iv. 469

Dr. Morley began medical work at Teian . . v. 519

Chamrajnagar, Mysore, first occupied . . v. 294
G. W. Clutterbuck appointed to Bombay ; erected

Byculla chapel . . . . . . v. 376

Burma visited by W. R. Winston with J. Milton

Brown ....... v. 382

Winston appointed to Upper Burma . . v. 382

Missionary Controversy began (1887-9) . . i. 142

1887 Order of Deaconesses founded in Germany by

Ekert ....... iv. 472

F. J. Briscoe stationed at Johannesburg, and built

first chapel ....... iv. 341

Wellawatte, Ceylon, developed by industrial

schools ....... v. 85

Wuchang high school opened .... v. 476

Dr. Hodge re-opened medical work in Hankow . v. 517

Work opened in Madrid . . . . . iv. 431

First copy of Vrittanta Patrike brought out in

Mysore ....... v. 292

Great ingathering of Sudras at Karim Nagar . v. 322

1888 Medical work begun at Tiruvalur, Negapatam . v. 258
Hankow Women's Hospital erected ... iv. 53
Mrs. Wiseman visited India and Ceylon . . iv. 53
Franklyn Smith sent to Balearic Isles . . iv. 431
Bryan Roe developed the work in Togoland,

West Africa ....... iv. 214

Miss Fanny Cooke appointed to Badulla, Ceylon v. 94

Two Joyful News Evangelists appointed to China v. 543

David Hill started school for the blind, Hankow . v. 489
Baptism of first Hindu caste woman convert in

Bangalore . . . . ,*, . v. 290

James Cooling became Chairman of Madras . v. 243

GENERAL HISTORY 603

1885 ' Cambridge Seven,' C.I.M., sail for China.

1886 Gold discovered at Witwatersrand.

Gladstone's Home Rule Bill rejected.

Canadian Pacific Railway opened from Montreal to Vancouver.

German East African Company formed.

Student Volunteer Movement started in America.

China Inland Mission attempted to enter Hunan Province,

China.
Forty Shan States in Burma annexed (v. 389).

1887 Queen Victoria's Jubilee.
Zululand annexed.
Johannesburg founded.
Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria, and Italy.

1888 British East Africa Company formed.

Local Government Act created County Councils.

Death of two Emperors of Germany. William I. and Frederick

II.

Revolution in Uganda. C.M.S. Missionaries expelled.
Political trouble in Haiti (ii. 514).
First European Missionary stationed at Hong Kong;

604 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1888 William Goudie went to live at Tiruvallur . J;; v. 233
Pakokku, Burma, occupied. School opened . v. 384

1889 Owen Watkins and Isaac Shimmin crossed the

Limpopo ....... iv. 346

' The Forward Movement ' in Mysore City initiated v. 292

W. B. Simpson opened work at Madurantakam . v. 234

Children's Home opened in Ikkadu (Madras) . v. 235

Medak first occupied by Missionary (W. H. Soper) v. 322
J. H. Bateson appointed Secretary of R.A.T.A. in

India v. 380

H. Little toured in Kongo-nad ; opened up to

Dharapuram (Negapatam) ... v. 255

1890 Owen Watkins invalided home. G. Weavind

became Chairman . . . . . . iv. 347

Lagos high school put in charge of African minister iv. 230

Orphanage opened at Wellawatte ... v. 86

' Sisters of Uva ' started Uva Mission . . iv. 60
Grainger Hargreaves opened Catechists' Training

College, Canton v. 450

Two more Joyful News Evangelists sent to China v. 544

First ward of leper asylum opened at Mandalay . v. 385

1891 George Lester lent by British Conference as

Chairman of Bahamas ... ii. 475

Salisbury and Epworth settlements founded, South

Africa .... . iv. 382

Industrial school opened at Kallar by Sheldon

Knapp .... v. 49

Tollerton, Joyful News Evangelist, died of small
pox at Lung-ping . . . . v. 543

William Argent and Mr. Green, H.I.M. Customs,

martyred ....... v. 479

Aler occupied, Haidarabad . . v. 323

Siddipett opened up by C. H.Winters (Haidarabad) v. 323

Baptism of Santals at Sarenga . . . . v. 405

1892 Work opened in Andros and Key West . . ii. 4?6~7
Haiti staff reinforced from United States . ii. 515
Dennis Kemp started industrial school at Cape

Coast .... iv. 182

German Mission co-operated with W.M.S. in

Dahomey .... iv. 217

Ijibu Remo, north of Lagos, visited, and Mission

opened .... iv. 220

Barratt of Germany died suddenly. E. Rigg

succeeded him . . . • • • iv- 471

Badulla first stationed by W.M.S. ... v. 93

GENERAL HISTORY 605

1888

1889 Charter granted Cecil Rhodes (British South Africa Company)

to develop district north of Transvaal (Rhodesia).
Revolution in Brazil. Republic formed.

Nine hundred slaves ransomed by British East Africa Company.
New Constitution in Japan.
Victory of Christians in Uganda.

1890 Treaties between European powers defining spheres of influence

in Africa.

Uganda placed itself under British protection.
Zanzibar left to British by Germany, who received Heligoland.
British South Africa Company occupied Mashona and Matabele-

land.

Death of Count von Moltke.

William III. of Holland succeeded by his daughter Wilhelmina.
Railway completed from Delagoa Bay into the Transvaal.
First Japanese Parliament (with President a Christian).
Shanghai Missionary Conference.
Moravian ' Marpoon ' Mission started in York Peninsula,

Australia (iii. 159).

1891 Great earthquake in Japan.

British Central Africa formed into Protectorate.

1892 British South-west Africa Company formed to develop Damara-

land.

Khedive of Egypt died. His son succeeded.
Fighting in Uganda between pro-French and pro-English.
Centenary of Baptist Missionary Society.

606 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1892 Canton Church became self-supporting . . v. 450
Medical work begun at Ikkadu, Madras . . v. 236
H. Little retired. W. H. Findlay became Chairman

of Negapatam ...... v. 257

Hardwicke College, Mysore City, opened . . v. 292

Work begun in Kundi, Haidarabad ... v. 323

Mrs. W. Burgess and child, and Rev. J. E. Malkin,

drowned in the Roumania .... v. 325

Orphanage opened at Raniganj, Bengal . . v. 357

Colaba Chapel, Bombay, opened. S. Rahator

ordained ....... v. 376

Australian Government asked for Missionary for

Fiji coolies ....... v. 372

1893 ' Bird College ' for girls established at Port au

Prince ....... ii. 515

Weavind visited Lorenzo Marques and met Robert

Mashaba ....... iv. 348

Methodist Society discovered at Ermelo, Swaziland iv. 372
Anti- Protestant riots in Balearic Isles. One

chapel closed ...... iv. 432

G. W. Olver visited Ceylon officially . . . v. 51
Hunan entered by Chinese Christians ... v. 482
Jubilee Hospital for women erected at Hankow . v. 523
Medical work transferred from Tiruvallur (Nega
patam) to Manargudi ..... v. 259

Leper asylum founded at Raniganj by F. Ambery

Smith ......... v. 357

Lucknow District divided into three sections . v. 363
Memorial sent to Government on Indian Native

Christian disabilities . . . . . v. 149

1894 Miss Jackson went out to Aburi for school work . iv. 183
Matabeleland entered. First sermon preached in

Buluwayo ....... iv. 383

Mashona District separated. I. Shimmin made

Chairman ....... iv. 390

F. W. Macdonald visited Italy officially . . iv. 510
Tayeh (Laymen's Mission) amalgamated with

Wusueh ....... v. 483

Lace industry developed at Ikkadu ... v. 248

Girls' boarding school built at Mandalay . . v. 385

1895 Printing-press purchased for Cape Coast . . iv. 185
Miss Ellenburger began work in girls' school,

Aburi ........ iv. 188

R. Mashaba deported by Portuguese Government

for six years ...... iv. 349

First fully qualified woman medical missionary

sent to China ...... iv. 61

Medical work begun in Ikkadu and Wellimade v. 101, 247

Medical work in West Africa .... iv. 60

GENERAL HISTORY 607

1892

1893 Dr. Nansen's Arctic Expedition set out on the Fram.

Seal fishing dispute in the Behring Sea with U.S. settled by
arbitration.

Defeat of Matabele by British South Africa Company. Their

country annexed.

Introduction of responsible government in Natal.
Royal Commission on opium traffic.
Livingstone College opened.

1894 Mr. Gladstone retired. Lord Rosebery Prime Minister.
British Protectorate established over Uganda.
Pondoland annexed to Cape Colony (iv. 309).

Death of Czar Alexander. Succeeded by Nicholas II.
President Carnot assassinated in France.

Japan invaded Korea and Manchuria. War followed with China.
Treaty with Belgium defining limits of Congo Free State.
C.M.S. began work in Moab.

1895 Government took over British East Africa Company's territory
Jameson Raid.

Insurrections in Cuba.

Peace concluded between Japan and China. Korea made

independent of China.
Massacres of Europeans in China.
Queen of Madagascar compelled to submit to French

suzerainty.
C.M.S. sent first women Missionaries to Uganda.

608 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1895 Ceylon Synod issued first annual address to

Methodists in Ceylon . . . . . v. 51

J. West transferred from Ceylon to chairmanship

of Negapatam ...... v. 52

1896 Centenary Fund raised in Sierra Leone . . iv. 108
Kumasi repopulated. Chapel and Mission House

built ........ iv. 192

Lydenberg section occupied. Miners' chapel built

at Pilgrim's Rest, Transvaal .... iv. 368

Martyrdom of James Anta and M. Molele in

Mashonaland . . . . . . iv. 386

Bryan Roe died in West Africa. Sutcliffe succeeded

as Chairman ...... iv. 217-19

German Mission handed over to M.E. Church . iv. 473-4
Puttur, Ceylon, occupied by Wesley Deaconess . v. 50

Death of David Hill on April 18 ... v. 484

W. Burgess returned to England. B. Pratt became

Chairman of Haidarabad . . . . v. 327

Miss Posnett and Miss Harris went out to Medak.

Medical work started . . . . . v. 328

1897 West Indian Conference appealed to Mission House

for help ....... ii. 463-5

Girls' school opened at Cape Coast by Mrs. Ellis . iv. 188
North India famine. Orphanages opened Jabalpur

and Medak ....... iv. 59

Medical work started at Wuchow ... v. 505

1898 W. R. Winston and Major Smith sent as deputation

to West Indies ...... ii. 468

Outbreak of savagery on West Coast of Africa ;

200 members killed . . . . . iv. 109

Six Matabeles baptized . . . . . ^.389

Two Wesley Deaconesses sent to Johannesburg . iv. 362

Training institution opened at Nengubo . . iv. 389

Ilesha visited, and work opened ... iv. 220
Luigi Capellini, Italy's soldier-evangelist,

died iv. 503

Miss B. H. Eacott appointed to Hanyang boarding

school ........ v. 534

Ruling sanatorium established, China . . v. 488
Mission invited by officials to occupy Indur

(Nizamabad). ...... v. 333

Negapatam College removed to Manargudi . . v. 262
One hundred and twenty persons baptized at

Porethakudi, Negapatam .... v. 260

W. H. Findlay elected Missionary Secretary . v. 257

1899 Chief of Bandajuma, West Africa, invited Mis

sionaries to open work . . . . . iv. no

GENERAL HISTORY 609

1895 Centenary of London Missionary Society.

Boundaries of Sierra Leone Hinterland arranged between
France and England

1896 British Protectorate established in Ashanti.
Assassination of the Shah of Persia.

Great earthquake in Japan ; 25,000 perished.

Famine in Central China and in India.

Kitchener started campaign against the Khalifa.

First knighthood granted to negro, Sir Samuel Lewis (iv. 108).

Matabele and Mashona revolt pacified by Cecil Rhodes (iv. 386).

J. R. Mott began Mission to students in Far East.

Missionary settlement for University women started in Bombay.

Insurrections at Johannesburg and in Rhodesia.

Distress in South Africa from drought and locusts and rinderpest.

1897 Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Chitral Expedition and Tirah Expedition.

Gold discovered in the Klondyke and Yukon districts, North

America.
Treaty between Russia and Japan to preserve the independence

of Korea under joint protection.

Wreck of the Aden at Socotra. C.M.S. Missionaries lost.
C.M.S. opened Peshawar Medical Mission.

1898 Battle of Omdurman.
German Navy League founded.
Death of Bismarck.

Spain and U.S. at war re Cuba.

China gave Russia a twenty-five years' lease of Port Arthur.

Empress of Austria assassinated.

Bi-centenary of S.P.C.K.

1899 Boer War began.

The Khalifa defeated and slain.
39

610 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1899 Death of Mrs. Appelbe in Mafeking ... iv. 353
First Portuguese Minister ordained. Work opened

in Lisbon ....... iv. 441

First baptisms at Wuchow . . . . v. 515

Hunan Mission opened . . . . . v. 498

Dr. Margaret Bennett appointed to Wuchang . v. 524

Mr. Protheroe, Laymen's Mission, China, ordained v. 541

Two Chinese pastors ordained by Marshall Hartley v. 537

First woman Missionary sent to Burma . . iv. 62

Jos. West appointed Chairman of Negapatam . v. 265

Movement began among Namadaris, Mysore . v. 295

Karunapura settlement founded in Mysore City . v. 300
Marshall Hartley visited India officially. Great

camp-meeting in Haidarabad ... v. 336

1900 Centenary of Bahamas Mission. Dr. Waller

visited officially ...... ii. 480

W. Perkins, Missionary Secretary, visited

Honduras ....... ii. 486

David Hill Memorial Hospital opened in Teian . v. 519

2,125 persons admitted into the Church at Medak v. 331

1901 W. H. Findlay visited West Africa officially . iv. 112-3
W. T. Balmer sent out to Richmond College,

Sierra Leone . . . . . . iv. 114

Fingoes settlement sprang up near Buluwayo . iv. 391
The Four Gospels and Acts translated into

Mashona ....... iv. 390

Miss Wykes sent to open girls' school in Barcelona iv. 434
F. W. Macdonald and Williamson Lamplough

visited Italy officially . . . . . iv. 511

Theological training began in Wuchang . . v. 528

Changsha, Hunan, occupied .... v. 498
Mr. Cooper, Joyful News Evangelist, ordained in

China v. 544

Soldiers' and Sailors' Home opened in Hong Kong v. 455
Work among students at Triplicane developed by

Kellett and Cocks .... v. 238
Theological training and normal school combined

in Mysore City v. 281

Marathi Orphanage opened at Mahin, Bombay . v. 378

Kyaukse, Burma, occupied .... v. 388

1902 Government offered grant for industrial school

at Bathurst ... ... iv. 144

Women's Hospital opened at Indur ... iv. 62
William Burgess appointed General Superintendent

in Italy • iv. 511

Boys' ' Southern Cross ' school built in Ikkadu . v. 249

Both Madras Circuits became self-supporting . v. 240
Decennial Conference of Missionaries in India,

Burma, Ceylon, held in Madras ... v. 240

GENERAL HISTORY 611

1899 Peace made between Spain and U.S. Cuba and Philippines

ceded to U.S. for twenty million dollars indemnity.
International Peace Conference at the Hague.
Dreyfus case re-tried in France.
Centenary of C.M.S. and R.T.S.
Griffith John (L.M.S.) developed educational work in China.

1900 British Protectorate established in Nigeria

Massacres by Boxers in China. Pekin Legations besieged.
King of Italy assassinated.

1901 Death of Queen Victoria, January 22. Accession of Edward

VII.

Proclamation of Australian Commonwealth, January i

Assassination of President McKinley.

Roosevelt became President U.S.

Constitution of Hague Arbitration Court settled.

1902 Coronation of King Edward VII.
Boxer rising in China.
Boer War terminated.
Anglo- Japanese Alliance concluded.
Death of Cecil Rhodes.
Education Act passed.
80,000 perished in volcanic eruption at Martinique.

6i2 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1902 Re-constitution of Foreign Synods. Institution

of Local Committees . . . • • i. 105

1903 West Indian Districts reverted to charge of

W.M.S. Committee .... ii. 472
A. T. R. Bartrop returned to Gold Coast as

Chairman iv. IQ3~4

Marshall Hartley visited South Africa officially . iv. 356
Amos Burnet sent out as Chairman of the

Transvaal • iv. 35^

J. White became Chairman of Mashona District . iv. 394
Wilks invalided home from Lisbon. J. A.

Simpson succeeded him ..... iv. 442

Wuchang women's hospital opened ... v. 524
Lo Yu Shan baptized first three converts in

Hunan v. 499

Normal school for women opened in Bangalore City v. 302

First Namadari baptism, Mysore District . . v. 297
Leper home opened at Bankura, Bengal. College

department added to high school ... v. 357

1904 First Wesley Deaconess arived at Cape Coast.

School opened at Accra ... . iv. 189

Sekhukhuniland Circuit formed in Transvaal . iv. 370
F. J. Briscoe appointed to Kilnerton training

institution .... . iv. 3^4

First Christian marriage took place in Mashonaland iv. 401

Three Native Ministers ordained in Mashonaland . iv. 401

Work opened at Kwenda and Gambo, Mashonaland iv. 404

Mr. J. Bond (J.N.E.) began medical work at Igbora iv. 226

Mrs. Griffin opened medical work at Oyo (Lagos) . iv. 226
European Missionary appointed to Lorenzo

Marques iv. 349

Hudson Memorial Church opened in Bangalore City v. 303
Mr. R. A. Stott appointed to industrial school,

Tumkur (Mysore) ... . v. 162
Missionary appointed to Tamil work on Kolar

gold-fields v. 289

1905 Translation of New Testament completed in

Mashona iv. 403

Society formed at Selukwe, Mashona ... iv. 39?
Two more Wesley Deaconesses sent to Johannes
burg iv. 362

Training institution opened at Ibadan, Lagos . iv. 229

Pioneer work in Blauberg, Transvaal iv. 368-9

Three South Ceylon Districts re-united . v. 96

Ping-Kiang first occupied (Hunan) ... v. 501

Two Mission Houses burned in Shiuchow . . v. 457

Twenty baptisms among Doms of Bengal . v. 368
Mary Calvert Holdsworth Memorial Hospital

opened in Mysore City . . . • • v. 301

GENERAL HISTORY 613

1902

1903 Tariff Reform League instituted.

Kano and Sokoto, West Africa, taken by English.
King of Serbia and his wife assassinated.
Disturbances in Macedonia.
Alaska Boundary Commission.

Korea drawn under Russian influence. Japan and Russia
Governments in conflict.

1904 War opened between Japan and Russia.
Dervish risings in Somaliland.

Anglo-French agreement signed in April, relating to New
foundland, West Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Siam, Madagascar,
and New Hebrides.
Treaty with Thibet carried through by Col. Younghusband.

1905 Fall of Port Arthur. Great Japanese victories.

Peace signed between Russia and Japan, Korea being left to
Japanese protection, Manchuria evacuated by Russians, and
the peninsula ceded by them to Japan.

614 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1905 Jubilee Home for Women opened in Bangalore City v. 302
143 Santals baptized, Bengal .... v. 406

1906 West Indian fund of £30,000 raised to discharge

debts ........ ii. 473

Cape Coast Collegiate School and Mfantsipim

School amalgamated and affiliated with London

University, 1912 ...... iv. 187

Second Minister appointed to Mafeking railway

centre ........ iv. 366

Lisbon station abandoned ..... iv. 442

Extension Fund raised by Ceylon Church . . v. 103

W. H. Findlay visited India officially ... v. 390

Dr. Roderick Macdonald murdered by Chinese

pirates . . . . . . . v. 515

Wuchang high school rebuilt. Normal school

and theological college developed . . . v. 531

Hunan made a separate District . . . v. 500

Medical work began in Pao King Fu ... v. 502

Margaret Bennett Hospital opened ... v. 525

Redfern Memorial Hospital opened in Hassan,

Mysore ....... v. 299

1907 Training provision made for girls at Kilnerton,

Transvaal ....... iv. 365

Financial crisis in Transvaal Mission. Million

Shillings Fund raised ..... iv. 360

Church built at Epworth, Mashonaland . . iv. 388
New buildings for Wesley College, Colombo,

opened ....... v. 99

Dr. Tatchell began medical work at Tayeh, China v. 520

' The Methodist Eleven ' sailed for China . . v. 458

Medical work began in Anlu and in Yung Chow Fu v. 519
Benj. Pratt invalided home ; F. Lamb succeeded

to chair of Haidarabad ..... v. 338
Mrs. Kerr began medical work among lepers at

Dichpalli ....... v. 345

Chapel built for Europeans at Madhupur . . v. 360

1908 Death of W. Comber Burgess, pioneer North of

Zambesi ....... iv. 409-10

W. J. Bird, first European Missionary appointed

to Manaar ....... v. 50

New hospital opened at Fatshan . . . v. 516

Thirty-eight baptisms in Chamrajanagar District,

Mysore ....... v. 294

District evangelist set apart for the Mysore . v. 305

Marathi chapel built at Parel, Bombay . . v. 378

Dispensary built at Nagari, Madras District . v. 249

1909 Jubilee Fund of Women's Auxiliary raised, £27,200 iv. 64
Theological Institution opened at Changsha,

Hunan ....... v. 502

GENERAL HISTORY 615

1905

1906 International Conference at Algeciras to settle Moroccan
questions.

1907 Self-government granted to Transvaal and Orange River Colony.
Anglo-Russian Convention respecting Persia and Afghanistan.
Great floods in Canton.
Missionary Conference at Shanghai.

1908 The Sultan of Turkey conceded a constitution with parliamentary
representation.

1909 Great fire at Port au Prince, Haiti.

Revolution in Turkey. Sultan Abdul Hamid II deposed.

616 METHODIST MISSIONARY HISTORY

1909 Training school for women opened at Yiyang . v. 501
Rioting in Manargudi ; chapel burnt ... v. 263
Movement among Chamars, Akbarpur . . v. 406
Movement began in Dharapuram, Negapatam . v. 255
Press set up at Medak ..... v. 338
Divinity school opened at Chadarghat, Haidara-

bad ........ v. 340

1910 New Zealand Conference became separated . . iii. 144
Missionary appointed to Gatooma Mining Station,

South Africa . . . . . . iv. 411

Riots in Changsha. Mission property looted . v. 503

Wood Memorial Hospital opened at Nizamabad v. 345
New college buildings erected for high school,

Bankura ....... v. 359

1911 Union Medical College opened in Hankow . . v. 522

1912 Sectional committees appointed, Eastern, Western,

and African ....... i. 168

Medical work begun at Ilesha, Lagos, by Dr.

Stephens, Wesley Guild Missionary ... iv. 225

Lagos girls' high school re-organized under Wesley

Deaconess . . . . . . . iv. 231

Porto Novo, Lagos, celebrated its jubilee ; 727

members ....... iv. 232

White crossed the Zambesi, established stations

at Chekembi and Broken Hill mine . . iv. 409

Medical work begun in Rhodesia by Dr. S. Osborn iv. 411

Industrial department added to Nengubo institu
tion ........ iv. 412

Dr. Haigh visited China officially . . . v. 458

Chinese Government appealed for prayer . . v. 449

Miss Frances Campbell opened medical work

among Namadaris ..... v. 297

Normal school for men opened in Tumkur . . v. 302

Hostels added to Bankura College ... v. 359

1913 Native Land Bill proposed by South African

Government . . . . . . iv. 376

Hospital for women opened at Anlu ... v. 520

Theological Institution at Changsha became a

Union Institution. Christian University

established ....... v. 505

Boarding school for girls opened at Yiyang . v. 503

Burmese Minister appointed to Upper Chindwin

District ....... v. 389

Centenary celebrations on the field ... v. 309

Hostel opened for Ceylon Deaconesses at Puttur v. 50

GENERAL HISTORY 617

1909

1910 Death of King Edward. Accession of King George V.
Revolution in Portugal. Republic established.
Duke of Connaught opened first Union Parliament of South

Africa.
Edinburgh Missionary Conference (i. 168).

1911 Chinese Revolution. Republic set up (v. 494).
Delhi Durbar. Delhi made Capital of India.

Duke of Connaught became Governor-General of Canada.

War between Italy and Turkey.

Political crisis between France and Germany re Morocco.

1912 Peace signed between Italy and Turkey.
Balkan States declare war on Turkey.

Peace Conference in London, attended by Balkan and Turkish
delegates.

1913 Turks refused peace terms of Conference.

Second Peace Conference held in London ; peace concluded by

Treaty of London, May 30.
War in Balkans. Peace signed at Bucharest on August n.

INDEX

Achchelu, 50

Adam's Peak, 16

Adkin, E., 291

Agrarian Settlements (India), 160

Ahambaram, Paul, 112

Ahmednagar, 376

Akbarpur, 364, 367, 370, 371

Aler, 323, 339, 346

Alexander, B. H., 498

Alexander, Dr. Clara J., 307

Alithorei, 260

Allan, C. W., 488, 492

Allen, J. H., 372

Allen, R. W., 311

Allen, Samuel, 66, 67

Almorah, 351

Ambala, 380

Ambrose, Abraham, 191

American Arcot Mission, 168, 416

American Baptist Mission, 389

American Baptist Missionary

Society, 392, 522
American Board of Missions, 168,

5io
American Church Mission, 52572,

54°. 551

American Madura Mission, 415
American Presbyterian Mission, 453
Amethi, 371
Amiens, Treaty of, 2 1
Anderson, H. E., 452, 458
Anderson, W. J. Webb, 452, 456,

457. 515

Anderssen, Anton, 513, 514
Anglicans, in Ceylon, 22, 62 ; in
India, 136, 194, 416, 417; in
China, 557, 559, 56o. See C.M.S.,
S.P.C.K., S.P.G.
Anglo-Chinese Treaty, 481

Animism, 123 ff, 383
Anlu, 491, 519, 520, 533, 541
Annexation of Upper Burma, 381
Anstey, J. C. Knight, 326, 333, 340
Anti-foreign feeling (China), 427,
429, 444, 467, 477, 503, 511, 519
Appapillai, James, T., 113
Arcot, 183, 230

Argent, William, 479, 480, 544
Armistead, W. M., 273, 277
Armour, Andrew, 58, 77, 114, 177
Armstrong, W. H., 106
Army Temperance Association, 380
See Military Work

Arnold, Matthew, 24

Arthur, William, 193, 207, 208, 211,
212, 218, 303, 434, 464, 465

Arulappa, Christian, 191

Aryans, 16 ; religion of, I22ff;
caste and, 132

Ashcroft, H., 244

Assam, 357

Atkins, F. R., 379

Ault, WiUiam, 24, 28, 29

Australian Methodist Mission, 372

Badulla, 93, 94, 101

Ball, Miss, 171

Bandawarella, 93

Bangalore, 163, 181, 189, 201, 202,

206 ff, 246, 268, 270, 276, 289,

299, 301, 302
Bangalore Conference of 1879, 140 ;

of l877. 352
Bangalore Herald, 271
Bangalore United Theological

College, 1 68, 169, 281, 412
Banks, John Shaw, 272, 276

619

620

INDEX

Bankura, 349, 350, 352, 357, 359,

360, 404, 406

Bankura College, 156, 359, 404
Bankura Mission, 160
Bankura Technical School, 359
Baptist Missionary Society, 22, 87,

105

Baker, A. A., 457
Barber, Mrs., 524
Barber, William, 41
Barber, W. T. A., 41*1, 467, 468,

474 ff, 485, 528, 531, 542, 55i
Barker, J. A., 53
Barley, A. F., 228
Barnes, Robert A., 112
Barrackpur, 350, 355, 360
Batchelor, Peter, 199, 207, 218,

220, 268

Bateson, J. H., 376, 380, 382
Batticaloa, 26, 35, 37, 43. 49, 53,

112

Baugh, G., 82, 83, 92, 352
Beach, W. R., 434, 436
Beauchamp, Miss A. M., 279
Beebee, Joseph, 113
Beecham, John, 192, 431, 434, 437
Bell, Joseph, 473
Bell, Mrs., 473, 523, 534
Bellary, 182, 184
Benares, 353, 364, 367, 369, 370
Benares District, 363. See Lucknow
Bengal District, 348-62 ; statistics

in 1913, 362
Benjamin, Joseph, 112
Bennett, J. Gordon, 346
Bennett, Miss Margaret, 524
Bentinck, Lord William, 146
Besant, Mrs., 97
Best, J. K., 193, 194
Bestall, A. H., 382, 384, 387, 388
Bestall, W. J. G., 48, 89
Biblewomen, 278, 379
Bintenne, 38
Birch, Captain, 25
Bird, W. C., 50, 52, 103
Bishenpur, 352, 405
Bisset, George, 26, 58
Blackburn, E. P., 253, 254

Black Town (Madras), 182, 196,

198, 214, 215, 218
Blavatsky, Madame, 235
Bleby, Henry M., 356
Blind School at Hankow, 489, 542
Boden, F., 479, 482, 485
Bodhaka, Bodhini, 174
Boers, in Ceylon, 95
Bombay, 299, 351, 358, 363, 366,

375
Bombay and Panjab District, 375-

Bommanahalli, 295
Bone, Charles, 452, 455, 456, 457.

536

Boone University, 551
Boote, R. W., 306
Booth, Dr. R. T., 512, 520
Bott, Joseph, 30, 31
Boulter, R. S., 228, 254
Bourne, Alfred, 72, 191
Boxer Movement, 426, 448, 449,

487, 499
Boxers, 487
Boyce, W. B., 442
Bradford, E. J., 388, 389
Brahma, the deity, 128, 133
Brahmanism, 121, 224
Brahmans, 122, 128 ff, 146, 394,

410

Brahman priests, 232
Bramfitt, T., 481, 483, 485, 488, 490
Bramfitt, William, 472
Breeden, J., 237
Brewer, J. W., 470, 472, 473
Bridgnell, William, 72, 75, 77
Bridie, William, 450, 452, 453, 535,

536
British and Foreign Bible Society,

71, 115, 173, 387, 472
Broadbent, J. H., 350, 351
Broadbent, Joseph, 35 in, 352
Broadbent, Miss Edith, 293
Broadbent, Samuel, 30, 31, 60
Broadhead, J. R., 404, 405
Brockbank, A., 306
Brown, A. O., 237
Brown, J. Milton, 46, 47, 52, 109,
354- 356, 372, 376, 382

INDEX

621

Brown, Richard, 228

Brownrigg, Sir Robert, 26, 57, 102

Broxholme, Miss E., 538

Bubonic plague, 299, 358

Buddha, Gautama, 16, 56

Buddhism, 77, 96 ; not a religion,
56 ; ' revival ' of, in Ceylon,
91-2, 97 ; the Government and,
106 ; in Burma, 382, 383 ; in
Thibet, 382, 425 ; in China,

424. 425

Buddhist priests, 77, 81, 105
Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance,

105

Budgett, J, S., 232
Bunting, Jabez, 431
Burgess, Arminius, 213, 214, 219,

226, 228, 313
Burgess, William, 224, 228, 231,

312 ff, 377 ; character and work,

326-7
Burgher Community (Ceylon), 21,

33- 37. 75
Burma District, 157, 381-91 ;

statistics for 1913, 391
Burmese people, 383
Burnet, Amos, 288, 301
Burnett, E. S., 95
Burrow, R. F., 244
Butler, Dr., 178, 319
Byculla, 376, 378, 379

Calcutta District, 353 ff, 363
Calcutta Mission, 188, 203, 222,

348 ff, 361
Callaway, John, 60
Campbell, A. H. C., 319, 325, 377
Campbell, Miss, 297
Camp meetings, 356
Canadian Presbyterian Mission, 489
Canagasabey, James D., 112
Cananore, 186
Canton, 431, 438 ff, 446, 448, 452 ff,

463, 486, 513
Canton District, 443, 449, 451, 452,

456, 457
Cape, A. Trevellick, 373

Cape, C. Phillips, 367, 368, 373

Caravore, 38, 43

Carey, William, 143

Carmichael, T., 364

Carr, J., 280

Cartwright, Miss M., 44

Carver, Robert, 30, 60, 186, 193,

194. J95

Caste system, in Ceylon, 31, 32, 46 ;
in India, discussed, 131 ff, 159,
410, 411 ; attitude of early
missionaries to, 135 ff, 198 ;
observance of, by Christians
225, 341 (cf. 315)

Catechists, 42, 70, 75, 76, 83, 159,
167, 200, 225, 229, 231, 236, 245,
265, 277, 28r, 287, 455, 458, 474,
499, 536, 538

Centenary of the Society, 251, 309,

458

Central China Mission, 462 ff, 469,
474, 484, 518, 529, 530- 543

Central China Prayer Union, 475

Central China Tract Society, 472

Ceylon, religious history, 16-22 ;
Synod for, 51 ; division into
Districts, 67 ; work among
women and girls, 100 ff ; in
digenous ministry of, 75, 109 ff

Ceylonese deaconesses, 51

Ceylonese ministers and ministry,
33, 42, 62, 75, 79, 89, 109 ff

Chadarghat, 317, 323, 325, 340, 408

Chak Tong, 447

Chamars, 370, 406

Chamrajnagar, 294

Champness, C. S., 504, 544, 545

Champness, Mrs., 501

Champness, Thomas, 545

Chang Chin Tung, 486, 551

Changsha, 480, 496 ff

Chang Yihtze, 482

Chapels opened : in Jaffna, 36 ;
in Colombo, 59 (cf. 103) ; in
Madras, 180, 240 ; in Haidara-
bad District, 346 ; in Bombay,
378, 379 ; in Hong Kong, 433 ;
in Wusueh, 480. See also
passim

622

INDEX

Chapman, B. B., 532

Chapman, C. H., 388

Charlesworth, Walter, 89

Chaw, Job Hpo, 389

Cheng Ching Yi, Dr., 559

Chettle, W. A., 356

Chia, Dr., 483

Chiang, Dr., 520

Chiao Kow, 480

Chikka, 211

Chilaw, 103

Chin tribes, 390

China Breakfast Meeting, 440, 460

China, character of the people of,
421 f

China Inland Mission, 469, 477,
496, 548, 562

Chindwin River, 385

Chinese catechists, 454

Chinese Christian Church, 560

Chinese Life of Christ (Selby), 452

Chinese ministers, 450, 529

Chinese Ministry, 471

Chinese Parliament, prayer re
quested for, 449

Chino-British Wars, 429, 438

Chino-Japanese War, 485

Chitaldrug, 305

Christian College Magazine, 235

Christian Literature Society, 173,
174, 218

Christian Workers' Association
(Ceylon), 94

Chronological table of events,

563

Chu Sao Ngan, 464, 528

Chung Yang, 482, 484

Church of the future (China), 558

Church of England Zenana Mission,

303

Church Missionary Society, 105,

148, 149, 155, 294, 405, 416
Church of Scotland, 320, 415
Churchward, Miss S. R., 275
Circuits, classification of (India),

414

Clayton, A. C., 174, 236, 246
Clayton, G. A., 488, 490, 532
Close, Titus, 180 ff

Clough, Benjamin, 23, 24, 57, Go,
72, 73, 74, 179 ; character and
work, 68

Clutterbuck, G. W., 376, 377

Cobban, G. Mackenzie, 227, 231 ff,
251, 398, 407

Cockill, W. R., 218, 219

Cocking, S., 277, 280

Cocks, G. G., 238, 239, 243

Coke, Thomas, 22 ff, 59«, 144,
176, 177

Colaba, 376

Colombo, 15, 19, 26, 27, 57, 72, 73,
81, 83, 85, 103, 177

Colombo City Mission, 102, 168

Community movements, 161, 343,
395-409

Confucian system, 423 ff, 445

Confucius, 421, 422, 478

Constitution of Indian Missions, 413

Cooke, Miss, 94

Cooke, Miss A. B., 293, 307

Coolies, Indian, 357, 372

Cooling, James, 227, 233, 261 ; char
acter and work, 243

Coonoor, 40

Cooper, E. C., 482, 498, 499, 503,

5°5, 5°6, 544

Coorg, 205, 207

Coppin, W. Terry, 373

Corlett, J. S., 86, 95

Corley, F. E., 239

Cornaby, Miss, 360

Cornaby, Mrs., 490

Cornaby, W. A., 485, 487 ; char
acter and work, 487

Cowling, E., 503

Cox, G. W., 237

Cox, Josiah, 434, 436 ff, 442, 443,
460 ff, 496, 510, 530

Crane, R. H., 258

Cranswick, J. M., 209

Crewdson, M. F., 322

Crosette, Mr., 489, 490

Crowther, J., 37, 193, 195, 196,
197

Cryer, Thomas, 137, 154, 173, 189,
192, 199, 202, 206, 268, 280 ;
character and work, 214

INDEX

623

Cubbon, Major-Gen., 270
Gumming, J. H., 273, 276
Cundall, Dr. Edward, 519
Cusworth, R. W., 351

Dalahalla, Charles, 370

Dale, Mrs. Ann, 348

Dalhousie, Lord, 146

Dalzell, S., 280

Daniel, Elias, 259

Danish Church, 136

Danish missionaries to India,

178

Darrell, J. H., 90
Davangere, 291
Davey, A. H., 262, 264
David, Christian, 28
David, Devadasan, 245
Dean, W. H., 45
Decennial Conference of 1902

(India), 237, 240
Dempsey, P. T., 483, 544
Denham, Miss Emma, 500
Devadasis, 308
Devasagayam, S., 138
Dewstoe, Edgar, 448, 452, 458
Dharapuram, 255
Dichpalli, 345, 346
Dick, Mr., 496
Dickson, W. H. A., 79
Divas-Pitar, 126

Divinity School (Chadarghat), 340
Dixon, John, 228
Dobbs, Major, 275
Dodd, W. S., 255, 265
Doms of Benares, 368, 369, 370
Dorward, A., 477, 496
Douglas, Miss, 78
Dowson, J. L., 490, 541
Dravidians, invasion of Ceylon

and India by, 16, 55, 368, 395,

403 ; religion of, 123, 128,

364

Drummond, Henry, 421
Dubois, Abbe, 187
Dumbarton, A., 297
Dum Dum (Calcutta), 355, 360

Duncan, Miss, 483
Dunhill, Miss, 290
Durnford, Mr., 179
Dutch, in Ceylon, 19 ff
Duthie, J. W., 356

Eacott, Miss, 44, 101

Eacott, Miss B. H., 534

Early, P. V., 457

East India Company and Missions,

142 ff, 216 ; and the opium

trade, 428
Eastwood, Miss, 92
Eaton, J. H., 82, 93
Edinburgh Missionary Conference,

504, 558
Educational work and policy :

in Ceylon, 44, 46, 62, 88, 93, 97 ;

in India, 153-9, 226, 241, 266,

27°. 3°5- 359, 384, 388 ; in

China, 436, 474, 491, 526-39.

See Evangelism.
Edwards, E. Stanley, 297
Edwards, J. F., 371
Ellareddipet, 339

Elliott, J. A., 152, 237, 353, 364, 365
Ellis, J. J., 234, 263, 265
Enberley, Mr. and Mrs., 490
England, J. F., 33, 184, 186, 187

202, 203

Entwistle, Mr., 490
Erskine, G., 24, 65
Eslick, E. R., 288, 301
European population, in Ceylon,

37 ; in India, 185, 188, 196,

349 ff, et passim
Evangelism v. Educational work,

35, 44, 154, 236 (cf. 529)
Evers, P. J., 213, 218
Exley, Mr., 72

Famine of 1877 (India), 223, 229,
282 ; of 1896-7, 358, 366 ; of
1907, 368 ; of 1877 (China), 468

Farmer, Thomas, 432

624

INDEX

Farquhar, J. N., 132

Fatshan, 433, 439, 441 #. 45L 452,

5". 513. 533. 539 «
Fatshan College, 537
Feng, General, 555
Fentiman, A., 280, 364, 367, 372
Fetishism, 126
Fiddian, Mrs., 249
Field, B., 209
Findlay College (Manargudi), 156,

257, 262, 264
Findlay, G. H., 244
Findlay, W. H., 211, 253, 256, 257,
261, 390, 397, 413, 414

Fitchett, Dr., 249

Fletcher, J., 375

Fletcher, John K., 112

Fordham, J. S., 472

Fortune, P. T., 541, 542

' Forward Movement' in Mysore, 292

Fox, W. Buckley, 57, 65 ff, 85,
375 ; character and work, 71

Fox, W. S., 193

Franklin, C., 206

Free Churches of Scotland, 415

Frewin, J. A., 87

Fryar, George, 222, 226, 228

Fuller, A. R., 306

Fyzabad, 152, 363, 364, 365, 376

Gaff, G. A., 452

Galle, 19, 26, 60, 61, 78, 84 ; made

a District, 87
Gallipalli, 321, 336
Ganegoda, C., 103
Garforth, J. W., 53
Garrett, John, 193, 207, 209, 268,

269, 272

Garrett, W. T., 48
Garthwaite, Listen, 270..
Gauripur, 355, 356
Geden, A. S., 233
Gedye, E. F., 485, 527^, 531, 532
General District Conference (Ceylon)

60
General Synod (India, Burma,

Ceylon), 51

George, J. C., 33, 34
Georgetown (Madras), 251
German Lutheran Evangelical

Mission, 225

German missionaries, 275
Gibbens, G. Percy, 244, 249
Gibson, J., 440, 443, 445
Gibson, W. W., 498
Gillings, James, 38, 40, 228
Giriappa, 296
Girls and women, work among.

See Women and Girls
Glanville, T. B., 209, 269
Glenelg, Lord, 144, 146
Gloria, E., 218, 219, 254

Godavery Mission, 222, 321

Godavery River, 222, 321

Goforth, W., 489, 500

Gogerly, Daniel J., 63, 70, 73 ff, 85 ;
Walton's eulogy, 81

Gonds, 364

Goodwill, F., 297

Goodwin, Sergeant, 311

Gordon, General, 438

Gospel and the Mala, The, 314*1

Gossner Mission, 365

Gostick, F. W., 254, 288

Gostick, J., 198, 209, 212,

Goudie, William, 106, 171, 232,
233 ff, 239, 244, 247, 249, 251,
264, 346, 396, 399, 402, 406, 408

Gough, Dr. Ethel, 524

Gould, T., 175

' Government Christians ' (Ceylon),
20, 91, 97

Grand, Miss Lilian, 500

Green, Mr., 479

Greenwood, J., 280

Gregory, S. H., 366, 373

Grieves, R. E., 237, 246

Griffith, R. D., 40, 41, 193. *95. IQ6,

197. 199, 215

Gubbi, 205 ff, 269, 274, 291, 303
Guest, John, 191
Guildford, Earl of, 21
Guindy, 167
Gulliford, Henry, 175, 286, 287,

290
Gunaswami, 221

Gunson, Miss Mary, 538
Giitzlaff, Karl F. A., 510

Hadden, Dr. G., 499. 502
Hadden, R. P., 457
Haidarabad District, 151, 169, 170,
171, 224, 311-47, 393, 394, 400,
403, 412 ; statistics in 1907,
339 ; in 1913, 346
Haidarabad Mission, 312 ff, 412
Haidarabad State, 156, 211, 312,
314. 324, 328, 344. 345, 394, 4I2
Haigh, Harry, 113
Haigh, Henry, 103, 175, 2o8w,

286, 291, 449, 458, 537
Hakkas, 446, 447
Hall, A. C., 265
Halliday, F., 364
Hanchuan, 487
Hankow, 439, 441, 462 ff, 489, 494,

517. 520, 521, 542, 552
Han River, 462
Hanuman, 16
Hanyang, 462, 474, 487, 491, 534,

542

Happy Valley, 86, 96
Haputala, 93, 95
Hardey, E. J., 209, 212, 268, 270,

273

Hardey, E. P., 511
Hardey, Samuel, 189, 199, 203,

206, 213, 215
Harding, G. K., 322
Hardwicke College (Mysore), 170,

281, 287, 292, 293, 294
Hardy, R. Spence, 72, 73, 75, 76, 80,

82, 83, 94, 106
Hargreaves, Grainger, 447, 450.

452, 536, 539
Harker, A. J., 531
Harris, J., 291
Harris, Miss, 171, 328
Hart, Sir Robert, 440
Hart, W. H., 353, 356
Hartley, Marshall, 336, 537
Harvard, William M., 24, 26, 57 ff,
I77> 179, 375; character and
work, 68

625

Harvard, Mrs., 26, 375
Harvest Field, The, 276, 291
Hassan, 161, 163, 276, 283, 295,

299, 304, 305
Hastings, Warren, 428
Haswell, T., 192
Hatton, 84

Helps, J. Sydney, 498
Henotheism, 128
Heung Shan, 454
Heyward, Dr. W. B., 502, 521
Hickson, C. W., 244
Highfield, Henry G., 99, 350, 351
Hill, Basil, 542

Hill, David, 445, 466 ff, 48 1,
482 ff, 519, 530, 534, 54o, 54I,
54s ; character and work, 467,
474

Hill, J. K., 485, 492
Hill, J. R., 54 j, 542
Hill, Leonard, 380
Hill, P. K., 520
Hill, Samuel, 84, 89, 98
Hillard, T. C., 89, 98
Hindu idealism, 132
Hinduism, 255 ; break-up of, a
slow process, 120 ff ; and caste
system, 134, 140; power of,
under-estimated, 184
Hindu law of inheritance, 211
Hindu Tract Society, 234, 290 ;

College, 158
Hinson, G., 280
Hoare, W. E., 236
Hobday, G., 254
Hobday, J., 213, 218, 220, 228
Hocken, C. H., 281
Hodge, Sydney R., 475, 485, 517,

520, 523
Hodson, Thomas, 189, 203 ff, 215,

27off 281, 285, 348, 404
Holdsworth (Mary Calvert)

Hospital, 301
Holdsworth, W. W., 288, 292, 294,

300, 301

Holdsworth, Mrs., 301
Hole, G., 192, 195
Home Mission Societies in Ceylon,
50, 52, in

626

INDEX

Home Missionary Society (China),

56i

Honan Province, 490
Hong Kong, 429, 452 ff, 457
Hooker, Dr. A. 516
Hoole, Elijah, 181, 183, 186, 187,

201, 434

Hooper, J. S. M., 244
Horner, J., and Mrs., 375
Hospitals, in India, 170, 218, 297,

299, 301, 345 ; in China, 515 ff.
Horton, Dr. R. F., 168, 369
Hoyle, J.; 389
Hsi, Pastor, 426, 468, 472
Hsian Fu, 487
Hu Huan Hsi, 490
Hudson, H., 259
Hudson, Josiah, 280, 286, 298, 303,

310

Hudson, J. R., 373
Hudson, S. J., 483, 543, 544
Hughes, Hugh Price, 381
Hume, Alexander, 57, 66, 67, 71
Hunan District, 449, 485. 505
Hunan province, 463, 476 ff, 488,

496-507, 534, 544, 561
Hunanese, character of the, 497
Hung Jin, 460, 461
Hunsur, 293

Hung Sin-ts'uan, 436, 437, 460
Hupeh Province, 463, 464, 470,

476, 480, 482, 484, 534
Hutcheon, John, 272, 277, 287
Hutchinson, R., 458
Hutton, S., 438, 442
Hwang Shih Kang, 483
Hymn-singing, 221

Igatpuri, 325, 376, 377

Ikkadu, 163, 235, 236, 247, 408

Indian Church of the future, the,

410

Indian coolies, 357, 372
Indian Medical Service, 170, 386
Indian Ministers, 307, 337, 340
Indian Ministry, 165 ff, 221, 227,

244, 3°7

Indian Missions, constitution of,

413

Indian Missions, new policy in, 205
Indian Mutiny, 145, 146, 216-17
Indur, 332
Indigenous ministry, in Ceylon,

75 f, 108-15 ; in India, 165 ff (see

Indian Ministers) ; in China,

471, 528
Industrial Schools in Ceylon, 93 ;

in India, 159 ff, 333, 372
Ingram, Romilly Hall, 297, 298
' Intensive Method ' in missions, 205
Isaacke, Mrs., 187
Iyer, D. B. Subramanyam, 218

Jabalpur, 364, 365, 366

Jackson, Elijah, 30, 31, 60, 179

Jackson, G. W., 364

Jaffna, 19, 26, 28, 35, 43, 47, 5°. 53.
101, 113

Jaffna District, 34, 47, 52, 103

Jagtial, 339

James, John, 350

Jampettah (Colombo), 85

Jenkins, E. E., 182, 198, 200, 213 ff.
222, 225 ff, 233, 254, 290, 312, 350,
528, 530

Jenkins, John, 193, 207, 209
Jesuits in Ceylon, 18
Jobson, Dr., 80
John, Griffith, 463, 464
Johnson, J. A., 353
Johnson, Vincent, 501
Johnston, Sir Alexander, 57
Jones, J. P., 140, 141, 218, 222
Jowett, Hardy, 492, 498, 501, 502
Joyful News Evangelists, 161, 291,

479, 480, 482, 485, 543, 545
Jubilee Hospital (Hankow), 523
Jubilee of the Society, 222, 225

Kallar, 49

Kalmunai, 43, 47, 49
Kalutara, 66, 76, 85
Kalyana, Raman, 221

INDEX

627

Kalyani Hospital, 218
Kanarese Bible, 209, 269
Kanarese dictionary, 274
Kanarese, work among, 183, 189,
198, 203 if, 280, 302 ; first con
vert, 211

Kandiah, Yesudasen, 113
Kandy, 15, 69, 82, 84, 87, 90, 92 ff,

100, 101, 106
Kangayam, 255
K'ang Yuwei, 485
Karachi, 351, 376
Karim Nagar, 171, 315, 319, 320,

322, 335, 343, 346
Karma, the law of, 131
Karunapura, 300
Karur, 161, 222 ff, 254, 261, 266,

284

Kasinader, Charles, 112
Katts, John, 182
Kaveri, River, 224, 273
Kay, G. H, 373

Kellett, F. W., 236, 238, 239, 242
Kelly, Sergeant, 187
Kentung State, 389
Kerr, G. M., 345
Kerr, Mrs., 345, 346
Kessen, Andrew, 75, 76, 79 ; char
acter and work, 78
Kiangpeh, 541
Kiernander, John, 143
Kilner, John, 38 ff, 108 ff, 213*1 ;

character and work, 41
Kilner, Thomas, 73
Kindat, 389

Kingswood School, Kandy, 99
Kirimetiyana, 103
Kirkman, W. A., 244
Kiu Kiang, 463, 469
Knapp, Sheldon, 48, 49
Kodicara, D. S., 384
Kolar Goldfields, 289, 301
Kolarians, 403
Kollupitiya, 72, 86
Konga-nad, 255, 256, 266
Koo, Wellington, 555
Koramas, 295
Korea, 489, 500
Kowloon, 433

Krishnaswami, J., 263
Kublai Khan, 427
Kuling Sanatorium, 488
Kumbhakonam, 258, 267
Kundi, 323, 341, 342, 343
Kunigal, 207, 208, 212
Kurana, 94

Kurunegala, 70, 72, 73, 95
Kwan Kin, 425
Kwangsi Province, 515
Kwang Si Mission, 453
Kwangtsi, 468, 470, 471
Kyaukse, 388, 389

Lace Hall (Tiruvallur), 247, 249

Ladies' Society for Female Educa
tion in the East, 78

Laity, in Ceylon, 105, in

Lalmon, William, 61, 114

Lamb, Frederick, 314, 318, 325,
326, 334, 336, 339

Lamb, Miss, 293

Lan Clan, the, 481

Langdon, Samuel, 51, 83, 84, 87,
90, 92 ff ; character and work of,
93

Lao Tsze, 425

Laymen's Mission (China), 475, 483,,
485. 5i8, 529, 540 ff

Lazenby, H. T., 262

Leese, Gabriel, 48, 52

Legge, Dr., 433

Leipzig Missionary Society, 136

Leith, D. G. M., 244

Leong-on-Tong, 455

Lepers, work among, in India, 345,
357. 385, 386 ; in China, 513, 515
Leslie, E. T., 343
Levell, A., 218, 220
Lewis, James, 261
Leys School, Cambridge, 475
Liang A-fah, 436
Li Hung Chang, 448, 486
Li Kwang Ti, 482
Li T'ai Kai, 499
Li Tsun Shi, 454
Li Wen Tsen, 541

628

INDEX

Lister, Miss, 524

Literature and the Press, 173, 337,

472
Little, Henry, 223, 224, 228 ff,

243, 254, 255, 257, 261, 312
Little, J., 213
Little, Thomas, 236
Liu, Dr. Timothy, 562
Lo Yu Shan, 482, 498, 528, 541
Local Committees (India), 413, 414
Lockhart, William, 510
Lockwood, A., 52
Lok Ching, 448
London Missionary Society, 22, 149,

168, 170, 179, 182, 183, 194, 201,

-207. 255, 284, 285, 371, 415, 431,

441, 463, 522, 525n
Longbottom, William, 191, 195
Lower Burma, 382
Lucknow, 351, 353, 363, 367, 371
Lucknow and Benares District, 157,

363-374 ; statistics in 1913, 373
Luke, T., 289
Lungping, 544
Lunn, Henry S., 258
Lutheran Evangelical Mission, 225
Lutherans, 560
Lycett, Sir Francis, 464
Lyle, A. J. O., 280
Lynch, James, 24, 26 f, 61, 65, 67,

176 ff, 186, 188
Lyth, Miss, 234

Macao, 438
McClelland, T. J., 356
McCutcheon, J., 280
Macdonald, D. A. D. J., 352, 355,

356
Macdonald, Roderick, 448, 452,

456, 5H. 515
Machin, W., 373
McKenny, John, 24, 60, 72, 73
McLelland, Daniel S., 113
Madhupur, 360, 406
Madigas, 340, 341, 343, 344. 400,

403

Madras, 163, 171, 177, 195, 221,
224, 349. See Blacktown, George
town, etc.

Madras Christian College, 157, 235,

237
Madras District, 170, 197, 213-52,

34°. 393

Madras Missionary Conference, 140
Madras Presidency, 412
Madura, 267

Madurantakam, 167, 233 ff, 245
Mahila Sakhi, 174
Mahim, 378

Maitland, Sir Thomas, 22
Malacca, 438
Malas, 328 ff., 340, 341, 343, 400,

401

Male, A. H., 353, 364
Male, Matthew T., 193, 195, 207,

208, 209, 274, 275, 276
Malkin, Joseph E., 325, 326
Man Cheung Sha, 456
Manaar, 26, 43, 49, 102
Manargudi, 137, 156, 170, 191, 200,
215, 220, 226, 228, 253, 254, 257,
262, 264, 266

Manchu dynasty, 436, 449, 493, 552
Manchuria, 489
Mandagadde, 297

Mandalay, 384, 387, 388

Mandarin version of Scriptures, 492

Mandya, 293

Ma- Pa, 447

Marathi Mission, 325, 363, 378, 379

Marco Polo, 17, 427

Marrat, Jacob, 277, 280

Marris, C. C., 457

Marris, G., 451, 452

Marshman, Joshua, 143

Martin, E., 46, 372

Martin, E. O., 52

Martin, Miss F., 293

Martins, J. J., 186

Mass Movements, 211, 392-409.
See Community Movements

Masters, F. J., 440, 452

Matara, 24, 26, 66, 73, 103

May, Mr., of Bristol, 249

Maya, doctrine of, 133

INDEX

629

Meakin, Miss, 333
Medak, 171, 319, 329 ff, 337 ff.,
346

Medak Institution, 163, 169, 336,
339, 412

Medical work, in Ceylon, 44, 101 ;
in India, 170 ff., 249, 258, 345;
in China, 441, 466, 477, 508-25 ;
missionaries and, 172, 508

Mee, W. Caxton, 86

Mees, G. E., 388

Melnattam, 137, 189, 191, 193, 200,
215, 220

Mendis, B. Anthony, 82, 114

Menzies, Dr., 126, 127

Methodist Church in South India,
394

Methodist Eleven, The, 458

Methodist Episcopal Church, 178,
179, 319, 363, 470

Methodist Magazine, 23, 24

Methodist soldiers, 177, 182, 187,
202, 311, 350, 376, 380, 381, 432

Mettam, J. W., 162

Miles, George, 483, 540, 541

Military work : Madras, 182 ;
Secunderabad, 319 ; Barrackpur
and Dum Dum, 350, 360 ; Pan-
jab, etc., 376, 379, 380; Hong
Kong, 454

Milne, Dr., 436

Mission to Lepers in India and the
East, 357, 386, 515

Mission Press. See Printing-press

Missionary Committee, and the
death of Dr. Coke, 27 ; and
Ceylon affairs, 30 ; and the
Colombo Mission Press, 63 ; and
the East India Company, 147 ;
and the Madras Synod, 188 ; and
the ' Policy of Advance,' 238 ;
and the beginning of the China
Mission, 434, 440, 464

Missionary Controversy of 1890,
234, 259, 324, 408, 453

Mitchell, J., 356, 358, 359

Mitchil, C. W., 46^, 540, 541

Mitchil, J., 46

Molesworth, Lord, 27

Monahan, C. H., 168, 236, 248, 250

Monet, W. T., 25

Mong Fu Kong, 447

Mongolia, 556, 561

Monywa, 385, 389

Moors, in Ceylon, 16, 45

Moorshedabad, 348

Moratuwa, 76, 82, 114

Morley, Dr. Arthur, 518, 519, 540,

542

Morley, George, 348
Mornington, S., 280
Morison, Robert, 426, 456, 548
Morris, J., 209, 269, 271
Mortimer, E., 376
Moscrop, Thomas, 89, 90, 98
Moss, Sister Adela, 345
Mott, J. R., 168, 558
Moulton, Dr. W. F., 541, 542
Mowat, James, 181, 183, 187, 201
Muhammadans, in Ceylon, 16, 45,

108 ; in India, 268, 305, 314, 315
Murdoch, Dr., 64
Musson, W., 455
Muttu Lakshmi, case of, 290
Mysore City, 163, 207, 208, 209,

210, 2ii, 278, 279, 281, 290, 293,
299, 3°5

Mysore District, 148, 156, 161, 170,

211, 268-310 ; statistics in 1900,
302

Mysore Mission, 153, 195, 201, 202,
208, 209, 212, 258, 304, 310

Mysore State, 149, 158, 183, 192,
200, 201, 284, 285 ; described,
210 ; change of government, 288

Nagari, 249, 250
Namadaris, 295
Nanking, 438, 461
Nanyoh, 504
Napier, F. P., 440, 444, 466, 469,

470

Napier, Lord, 429
National Christian Council of India,

418/2 ; of China, 557
Nationalism, in Ceylon, 97 ; in

India, 415, 416

INDEX

.Negapatam, 135, 137, 177, 180,

181, 185, 189, 192, 196, 200, 216 ff,

243, 246, 253 S, 262, 266, 342
Negapatam and Trichinopoly

District, 156, 231, 253-67, 393
Negombo, 66, 76, 85, 92, 94~5. 102
Neill, J. E., 244
Nepean, Sir Evan, 25, 26
Newstead, Robert, 65, 82, 95 ;

character and work, 69
Nicholson, J., 83, 87, 90
Nicholson, T. F., 228, 253
Nightingale, A. E., 296, 297
Nightingale, A. W., 472, 473
Niles, Nathaniel, 112
Niles, Daniel, 112
Niles, Samuel, 112
Ningpo, 461

Nizamabad, 171, 332, 333, 344, 345
Noble, W. J., 100, 1 06
North, Hon. Frederick, 17
North, Mrs., 522, 523, 524
North, Thomas E., 473, 483, 485,

498
North Ceylon District, 27, 30, 31,

67 ; statistics in 1913, 53
North River District, 440
North River Mission, 446, 447, 448,

452, 453, 536
Nunn, F. L., 372

Oakes, W. L., 503

Olver, G. W., 51, 354, 356, 405

Om Shan, 536

Ongole, 392

Ootacamund, 208, 246, 254, 303

Opium trade in China, 427-30, 438,

551

Orme, Frederick, 180
Orphanages, 86, 229, 230, 245, 261,

282-3, 290, 301, 358, 366, 372,

3?8. 386
Osborn, G., 434
Osborn, James M., 112
Osborne, T., 30, 31, 65
Owen, G., 523

Paget, E. V., 306

Pakokku, 384, 385, 390, 391

Palaveram, 197, 199

Palm, J. D., 22

Palmer, Miss, 171, 234, 236

Panadure, 82, 91

Panchamas, 136, 137, 139, 152, 241,

267, 308, 361, 393, 395, 397, 400.

See Pariahs
Pan jab, 363. See Bombay and

Punjab District
Pantheism, 125, 128 ft., 423
Packing, 498, 502
Parel, 378
Pariahs, 131, 232, 234, 247, 248,

278, 395- See Panchamas
Parinbam, Christian, 113
Parker, H. J., 452
Parkes, Henry, 440, 442
Parkes, J. S., 439, 442
Parson, J., 365, 366
Parsons, Miss C., 307
Passion play at Oberammergau, 331
Passmore, J., 66, 98, 174, 244
Patterson, George, 228, 235, 236,

243

Pearse, Mark Guy, 360
Pearson, Daniel, 350, 351
Pearson, J. G., 46
Peel, Brignal, 364
Pekin, 426, 436, 463, 481, 487, 493,

553

Pell, Dr., 499, 5l8, 52O, 544
Pell, Mrs., 499

Peradeniya Training Colony, gift
Percival, Peter, 33 ff, 108, 109,

189, 203, 348, 349, 404
Persia, Mission to, 364
Persians, in Ceylon, 17
Perston, W., 306
Philips, J. W., 85, 112
Phillips, T. G., 387, 388, 389
Philpott, H. J., 86
Picken, W. H. J., 288
Piercy, George, 432, 433, 434,

439 ff-, 45i, 454. 462
Piercy, Mrs., 537, 538

INDEX

631

Pilgrim Tax of 1806 (India), 144,

146

Pingkiang, 501, 503
Ping Yang, 468, 469, 472
Pinkney, J., 198, 213, 215, 276
Pliitschau, 178

Point Pedro, 43, 46, 47, 53, 112
' Policy of Advance,' 1901 (India),

238, 242
Pollard, C., 237
Pomeroy, Miss, 524
Ponniah, A. D., 138
Ponniah, John, 113
Poole, Frederick, 542
Poona, 351, 376
Poonamalee, 187, 214
Pope, G. U., 145, 193, 194
Porathakudi, 260
Pordige, R. W., 272, 274, 276
Porto Novo, 193
Portuguese in Ceylon, 1 7 ff ; New

Testament translated into, 69 ;

services in, 93
Posnett, C. W., 317, 327, 329, 331,

337

Posnett, Miss, 171, 328
Pratt, Benjamin, 313, 321, 329,

332. 335. 4°2, 406, 408 ; character

and work, 338
Pratt, Mrs., 171, 319
Premadasa, 295
Prem Chand Nath, 354
Presbyterian Church of India, 415
Presbyterians, 560
Preston, J., 438, 442, 443
Price, H. Guard, 262, 332, 341, 342,

343

Priestnal, Miss, 248

Prince, E. A., 90, 93, 100

Printing-press in Batticaloa, 49 ;
in Colombo, 59, 62, 70, 72 ; in
Wellawatte, 86, 87 ; in Mysore,
J^3> J73. 263 ; in Bangalore, 209,
271, 274, 287 ; in Medak, 338

Protheroe, Thomas, 479, 483, 488,

54°

Puliantivo, 38
Pullan, G. L., 485, 531
Pursewalkam, 240, 251

Puttur, 50
Pyawbwe, 389, 390

Race, Joseph, 470, 473

Radcliffe, Miss Jane, 538

Rae, Thomas, 351

Rahator, Samuel, 325, 377, 378,

379

Ramayanpett, 171
Ramayana, 15
Rangoon, 184, 381
Raniganj, 357, 404
Ranikhet, 364, 371
Rattenbury, H. B., 498, 532, 533,

547^

Raw, H. W., 237, 239
Redfern, E. W., 297, 299
Redmond, J., 306
Reed, J., 373
Rees, D. A., 283, 302
Rees, Philip, 432, 457, 516
Rees, Rowland, 432
Reeves, W., 274
Reform Agitation, 38, 77
Reformed Church of Holland, 19,

21, 77

Religious Tract Society, 472
Restarick, A. E., 41, 44, 48, 53, 103
Revolution of 1911-12 (China), 449,

457, 493. 503. 555
Revivals of religion : at Batticaloa,

35 ; in Jaffna District, 48 ; at

Colombo, 8 1 ; in Galle, 103 ; at

Medak, 335 ; at Hankow, 489 ;

in Hunan, 500

Rhodes, J. Ottley, 46, 83, 85, 88
Richards, J., 351
Richmond College, Galle, 84, 90,

100
Richmond Hill, Ceylon, property

acquired, 79 ; buildings erected,

79-80, 84, 92
Richter, Dr. Julius, 125
Riddett, A. P., 286
Rig Veda, 124, 126, 130
Rigby, W. H., 89, 90, 93, 95
Rigg, Edmund, 46, 48, 49

632

INDEX

Riligala, 70

Rippon, Joseph, yon, 79

Ritson, John H, 533

Roberts, Ellis, 286

Roberts, Joseph, 29, 30, 33, 34, 73,

X97> 199, 212, 219
Roberts, T., 83
Robinson, B., 281, 287
Robinson, T., 218, 448, 452 458,
Robson, G. B., 52
Rockefeller foundation at Pekin,

556

Rogers, J. H., 440, 443
Rolston, Ibrahim, 371
Rolston, J. R., 371
Romish Church and Romanists, in

Ceylon, 18, 50, 95, 102 ; in India,

!37» !92, 259, 260, 386 ; in China,

427, 444, 496
Romanists and caste system, 136,

J37

Rose, A. C, 488
Ross, Sergeant, 432
Row, Kuppuswami, 221, 246
Rowe, James, 541
Rowe, Miss Jane, 538
Rowley, William, 488, 492, 520,

524, 533
Royapetta, 179, 197, 214,218,219,

225, 229, 230, 233, 237, 239, 251,

264

Royapuram, 214
Rungaramanuja, Paul, 263
Rungaswami, John, 168
Russell, M. H., 390
Russo-Japanese War, 487, 494, 526

Sackett, F. C., 332

Sackett, Walter, 288

Sadras, 193

Saidapet, 168

St. Thomas's Mount, 180, 187, 214,

228 ff

Saivites, 50
Salem, 230
Samuel, Abijah, 278
Samuel, A. Wesley, 253

Samuel, Joel, 220

San Foon, 454

San Thom6, 180, 182, 214

Sanderson, A., 373

Sanderson, D., 209, 212, 269, 272,

274, 276, 277
Sanjivi, 278

Sanmogam, John P., 109
Santals, 148, 356, 403
Santal Mission, 156, 353, 360, 361,

404 ff

Sarenga, 171, 404, 405
Sati, abolition of, 121, 146
Sawday, G. W., 282, 283, 286, 294,

301

Sawtell, W. W., 257
Scarborough, Mrs., 473
Scarborough, William, 445, 466 ff,

473. 475, 530
Schall, John A., 427
Scholes, E. F. P., 488, 502
Scholes, T. W., 458
Schrader, Mrs., 29
Scott, John, 82, 83, 89, 366, 372, 376
Scott, Luke, 46
Scott, Miss, 101
Scott, Miss, 248
Scott, Miss Mary, 275
Secunderabad, 163, 246, 311, 312,

317, 321, 336, 346, 408, 412
Seed, Walter, 377, 379
Seeduwa, 92
Selby, T. G., 440, 444 ff, 451, 452,

453

Senaratna, G. A. F., 103, 168
Serampore College, 170^
Seringapatam, 181, 201
Sethucavalar, R. N., 112
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 218
Shan Country, 389
Shanghai, 461, 490
Shanghai Conference of 1907, 456 ;

of 1890, 478 ; of 1913, 558
Shansi Province, 468
Shantung Christian University,

522H

Sheldon, A. W., 388
Sherratt, W., 387
Sheung Tai, 447

INDEX

633

Shield King,' the, 460, 461
Shi Kiu, 514
Shillington, Miss, 524
Shimoga, 270, 275, 276, 287, 298,

304

Shipham, A., 84, 98
Shipman, F. T., 265
Shipstone, J., 83
; bhiuchow, 444, 446, 447, 448, 451,

457. 492, 514

Shrewsbury, J. S. Wesley, 260, 262
Shrimpton, J. P., 244
Siddipett, 323, 333, 335
Sidney, Rt. Hon. Thomas, 440
Silva, C. A. de, 384, 387
Silva, Charles W. de, 115
Silva, David de, 91, 114
Silva, G. N. de, 57
Silva, Henry de, in
Silva, J. Simon de, 102, 174
Silva, Peter G. de, 77, 114
Simon, A. G., 532
Simpson, W., 291

Simpson, W. B., 167, 233, 245, 246
Simpson, W. O., 152, 155, 167, 215,
218, 221, 222, 231 ; character
and work, 223
Singapore, 438

Sinhalese, 16 ; origin of the, 55
Sinhalese- English dictionary, 63 ;

Bible, 87, 115
Sinhalese ministry, 113 ff
Sinzininex, Edward, 440, 445
Sironcha, 222, 313, 321
Slater, A. R., 306
Smailes, R., 265
Small, W. J. T., gin
Smith, A., 262
Smith, Dr. Dansey, 514, 516
Smith, C. Ryder, 379
Smith, E. H., 106
Smith, F. W. Ambery, 354, 357
Smith, F. P., 466, 470, 510, 524
Smith, S. J., 438, 442
Smith, W. O., 359
Sneath, A. A., gin
Society for the Diffusion of

Christian Knowledge, 487
Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel, 182, 194, 210
Society for the Promotion of

Christian Knowledge, 173, 179
So Kit San, Dr., 516
Soldiers, Methodist, 177, 182, 187,

202, 311, 350, 376, 380, 381, 432
Solomon, E. C., 366
Soper, W. H., 322, 323, 334
South Ceylon District, 27, 67, 84,

113 ; statistics in 1905, 87, in

1913, 107 ; reunited, 96
South India, statistics for 1849, 200
South India United Church, 415,417
Southern Cross Home, 235, 247, 249
Sowerbutts, J. C., 286
Spencer, H., 306
Spencer, W. M., 353
Spink, W., 353
Spooner, G., 373

Squance, Thomas H. 24 ff, 109, 180
Squarebridge, E. G., 193, 207, 208,

210

Srirangam, 267
Stationing Missionaries, difficulties

of, 65, 96

Stead, Abraham, 30, 31, 33, 182
Stephenson, J., 280, 281
Stephenson, Robert, 215, 218, 224,

225, 226, 227
Stott, R. A., 162, 284
Stott, Ralph, 33ff, 109
Stoup, Richard, 72, 73, 74
Street preaching in India, 151, 323
Strutt, Edward, 46, 47, 49, 88, 89
Subrahmanyam, T., 221, 245, 246,

263

Sudras, 136, 137, 315, 400
Suichow, 492
Sullivan, H. O., 277
Sunday schools, 267
Sunning, 454
Sunwui, 448, 453
Sutton, H. B., 488, 491
Swann, C., 291
Sykes, H. J., 273, 277
Sykes, T. G., 280
Symons, E. J., 280
Symons, S., 218, 280
Synod, first, in China, 435

634

INDEX

Syrian Church, 17

Sze, Alfred, 555

Szechwan Province, 490, 523

Tachur, 234

Tai-ping rebellion, 429, 436, 437,

460 ff, 477, 496, 497
Tai-Tau-Ling, 447
Taitung Shiang, 476
Talbot, W., 45
Tamil District (N. Ceylon), 13-54

(esp. 45, 47), 182 ; Indian circuits,

186, 201, 228, 231, 246
Tamil ministry, 108 ff
Tamil translations, 34, 138
Tamils, in Ceylon, 16, 31, 32, 66n ;

in India, 184, 189, 191, 200, 206,

236, 268, 280, 288, 289, 320
Tanjore, 258
Taoism, 424, 425
Tatchell, Dr., 477, 490, 513, 518 ff,

544

Tayeh, 483, 518, 520, 533, 541, 544

Taylor, Hudson, 548

Taylor, Mrs. Howard, 468

Teasey, Miss, 94

Tebb, R., 83, 86, 90, 93

Teian, 473, 474, 482, 518, 519, 533.
542

Teiyur, 234

Telugu country, 222, ; people, 231,
312, 320, 400

Temple, J. R., 457

Teng, Dr., 506

Thamotheram, Daniel V., 113

Theosophical writers and Budd
hism, 91 (cf. 235)

Theophilus, Daniel, 28, 108

Thibet, Buddhism in, 382, 383, 425

Thomas, A. A., 253, 261

Thomas, T. W., 387, 388

Thompson, E. J., 359

Thompson, E. W., 175, 178, 297

Thompson, J. M., 228, 253, 261

Thorp, W. H., 168, 297

Tientsin, 438, 444

Tientsin, treaty of, 438, 444, 460,

496, 497

Tinnevelly, 155, 217, 392, 416
Tirukovil, 49
Tiruvallur, 232 ff, 247 ff, 252, 340,

393. 396, 399

Tiruvalur, 219, 220, 229, 258, 259
Tobias, Miss, 279
Tollerton, A. E., 543
Tomlinson, W. E., 305, 306
Tomlinson, W. S., 472, 473
Tope, S. G., 452, 458
Totemism, 404
Toyne, Elijah, 73

Trade guilds, Indian, 133, 134, 159
Transmigration, 124
Travancore, 149, 217, 392
Tregoning, Miss, 279
Trewhella, W. B., 297
Trichinopoly, 182, 193, 215, 216,

219, 226, 228, 253, 254, 259,

260, 266

Triggs, Arthur, 89, 90
Trimmer, G. J., 46, 52
Trimulgherry, 317
Trincomalee, 30, 37, 43, 53, 112, 181
Triplicane Institute, 157, 237, 238,

243

Tsinan, 522^
Tucker, W. C., 53
Tumkur, 161, 170, 212, 273 ff, 281 ff,

296, 305

Tung Cheng, 484
Turner, A. W., 265
Turner, J. A., 455
Twentieth Century Fund, 52, 516
Twiddy, Miss, 36, 78, 199
Twistleton, Archdeacon, 57, 68
Tyler, Miss, 94

Union on the mission-field, 415, 504,

559
Union Medical College, Hankow,

522
Union Theological College, Canton,

537?*

INDEX

635

United Free Church of Scotland,

168, 236
U-Nyen, 448

Upper Burma, 381, 382, 384
Uva Mission, 86, 93

Vanes, J. A., 261, 286, 290, 298, 302

Varuna, 126, 127, 423

Vasco de Gama, 17

Vaz, Joseph, 20

Vedantism, 129, 133

Vedamitra, 295

Vedas, 126 ff

Veddahs, 16, 38

Vellore, 183

Velupillai, Daniel, 113

Vepery, 179

Vethanayagam, T. Samuel, 113

Vickers, Miss Agnes, 384

Vickers, B. R., 457, 516

Vickers, Miss D., 293

Vickers, Miss Evelyn, 307

Vickers, Dr. Helen, 525

Vickery, W., 388, 389

Village elders (India), 334, 400

Viranageri, 277, 278

Vivian, A. E., 366

Viziarangam, 218, 219

Voluntary service in Missions, 243,

504

Vrittanta Patrike, 175, 288, 292,

296
Vyramuttu, Richard W., 109

Waldron, H., 237
Walker, G. C., 301, 306, 376
Walker, W., 273, 277
Walmsley, W. B., 457
Walters, H. C., 388
Walton, John, 80
Walton, William, 41, 45
Walton, W. M., 43, 112
Wang, Dr., 441
Ward, William, 143
Warren, G. G., 482, 485, 498, 500,
503, 5o6

Warren, Mrs., 479
Watson, Richard, 30, 350
Watson, William H., 473, 476, 485,

498, 500, 502, 506, 541
Weaver, E. M., 48, 52, 53
Webster, E. E., 257, 261
Wei-hai-wei, 486
Welimade, 101
Wellawatte, 85, 86, 87, 96
Wenyon, Dr., 442, 452, 511, 512,

514, 517
Wesley, Benjamin, 312, 314, 321,

323
Wesley College, Colombo, 84, 89,

98-9
Wesley College, Royapetta, 157,

237 ff, 264
Wesley College, Wuchang, 491, 531,

55i

Wesley Deaconesses, in Ceylon, 50
Wesley, John, 24, 25, 178
Wesley, Susanna, 178
West, Joseph, 29, 48, 51, 52, 262,

265

White Cross Society (Burma), 387
White, Miss, 302, 303, 307
Whitehead, Silvester, 440, 444
Whittamore, T. H., 234, 353, 354
Whittome, J. T., 161
Wigfield, Dr., 520
Wijesingha, Cornelius, 61, 73, 114
Wikramaratna, H. de Silva, 115
Wilberforce, William, 24, 143
Wildish, Miss Hanna, 275
Wilkin, S. R., 84, 98
Wilks, W. Morley P., 52
Williamson, T. J., 186
Wilson, Bishop, 136
Wilson, R., 463
Winslow, Robert, 113
Winston, F. D., 388
Winston, W. Ripley, 46, 47, 52,

382 ff

Wiseman, Mrs., 333
Wolverhampton, Lord, 381
Women and girls, work among, in

Ceylon, 100 ff ; in India, 157,

227 ; in China, 522, 533, 537 ;

et passim

636

INDEX

Women's Auxiliary, in Ceylon, 44,
94, 100 ; in India, 157, 159, 164,
170, 218, 259, 275, 293, 302, 306,
384 ; in China, 491, 500, 523, 533,

535. 538
Women's Christian College, Madras,

Wood, Miss Annie, 538
Wood Memorial Hospital, 345
Wood, Mrs. (Sheffield), 249
Woodford, G. E., 356, 406
Woodward, A., 387, 388
Woodward, E., 253, 261
Wuchang, 437, 460, 470, 474, 475,

483, 490, 511, 524, 527, 531, 533,

535 ; explosion at, 469
Wuchang District, 449, 462, 471,

485, 493, 529 ; statistics for

1913, 493

Wuchow, 457, 468, 469, 515, 516
Wusueh, 468, 471, 476, 479, 480,

491, 522, 541, 544

Yale University, 500, 505

Yang Chow, 427

Yang-tse-kiang River, 462, 476

Yangtse Valley, 492

Yelgundel, 313

Yellow peril, the, 495

Ying Tak, 447, 448

Yiyang, 500, 501, 503, 544

Yo, Dr., 524

Yochow, 499

Young Men's Christian Association,

492, 493. 555
Yu, Mr., 489, 490
Yungchow, 499, 500, 502
Yunnan Province, 556, 561

Zenana visitation, 227, 290
Ziegenbalg, 178

Xavier, St. Francis, 17, 102, 259

CORRIGENDA IN PRECEDING VOLUMES

VOLUME I

Page 96 Line 17 For ' years ' read ' year.'

„ 136 „ 4 Read ' race and religion.'

,, 158 „ 36 For ' was ' read ' were.'

,, 280 ,, 24 Read ' Louisburg.'

„ 303 „ 9 Read ' 1791.'

.» 340 ,, 9 ' Of those . . . laboured.' Transpose to after

' poverty.'

>, 365 ,, 6 For ' Primitive ' read ' primitive.'

„ 380 „ 15 For ' Rebellion ' read ' war.'

.. 4J3 » 32 For ' in 1883 ' read ' after 1883.'

„ 493 „ 15 For ' vote ' read ' veto.'

„ 503 ,, 27 For ' Conference ' read ' Conferences.'

VOLUME II

Page 21 Line 36 For ' 20,000 ' ' read 26,000.'

,, 5 ., 5 For ' negro slavery ' read ' the negro slave-
trade.'

66 „ 5 For ' 1882 ' read ' 1832.'

,, 145 Note i For ' Matton ' read ' Malton.'

,, 167 Line 12 For ' 54 ' read ' 540.'

,, 187 ,, 18 For ' 1820 ' read ' 1824.'

J99 .. 34 ' Monday ' delete.

,, 263 ,, 8 For ' eleve ' read ' eleve.

,, 267 „ 7 For ' 1825 ' read ' 1828.'

,, 302 „ 30 For ' forty ' read ' fifty.'

„ 313 Note 3 For ' hitherto ' read ' Until 1824.'

,, 332 Line 12 For ' 1834 ' read ' 1835.'

,, 342 „ 22 For ' uncleanliness ' read ' uncleanness."

,, 452 ,, 18 For ' diversions ' read ' divisions.'

>» 473 •• 3° For ' 96 ' read ' 98.'

VOLUME III

Page 13 Line 28 For ' 1899 ' read ' 1869.'

,, 33 „ 21 ' May ' add ' 1821.'

„ 34 „ 13 For ' 1825 ' read ' 1829.'

,, 132 .1 34 For ' Chairman of ' read ' Chairman or.'

» J58 „ 36 For ' so ' read ' no.'

,, 198 „ 19 For ' now that ' read ' and after.'

.. 4X3 .. 5 For ' Colosse ' read ' Colossae.'

.. 445 » 1 8 ' And of which ' delete ' and.'

„ 460 „ 36 For ' save ' read ' safe.'

637

638 CORRIGENDA IN PRECEDING VOLUMES

VOLUME IV

Page 10 1 Line 40 For ' Miss ' read ' Mrs.'

„ 170 „ 26 and 29 For ' Aggery ' read ' Aggrey.'

194 .. 37 For ' H- A- Bethel ' read ' W. A. Bethel.'

205 „ 22 ' Before 1880 . . . but,' delete.

205 ,, 25 For ' that year ' read ' In 1880.'

208 „ 7 ' And was buried/ delete.

210 „ 23 For ' Isseyin ' read ' Iseyin.' Also p. 211.

214 „ 2 ' C. R. Johnson (1899),' delete.

214 ,, 2 For ' J. Gifford ' read ' S. Gifford.'

">t 214 „ 3 ' and H. Arnett (1907),' delete.

217 ,, ii ' begin work in,' delete.

217 „ 18 ' when he died,' delete.

218 „ 33 For ' shortly after they ' read ' they afterwards.'

219 „ 27 For ' several ' Circuits ' read ' Abeokuta.'
219 „ 31 For ' 1908 ' read ' 1907'

221 „ 23 ' whole,' delete

223 „ 25 For ' The Treasury, &c.' read ' They are to be
found in.'

223 „ 27 ' Are efficiently managed by Africans,' delete.

224 20 ' A few Christians of Lagos,' read ' an African

Minister.'
224 „ 24 ' The Rev. F. J. Martin,' delete.

230 „ 17 For ' E. W. Williams ' read ' E. E. Williams.'

231 „ ii For ' had ' read ' called for.'

329 „ 17 For ' Moselikatse ' read ' Umzilikazi,' so also in
Index, p. 526.

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